Artifacts: a Tenth DoctorRiver Song AU novella
by Angela P. Wade
Summary: Suppose River Song's only appearances on DW were in her first two-parter? I wrote this as backstory for Dr. Song before she had any canon backstory. It was supposed to be a light, fluffy romance between her and the Tenth Doctor . . . but then a PLOT happened.


Author's note: This was not _intended_ as an AU piece. I began writing it almost immediately after I first saw "Library of the Dead," and continued working on it through the end of that season. I tried very hard to make it fit canon—as far as it had been revealed at the time. Of course, the official plotline took the characters in _very_ different directions, but . . . just suppose . . . .

Artifacts:

Part One

"Oh, I am so sorry," said Professor River Song as she knelt to retrieve the book she'd knocked out of the young man's hands. "And look, I got coffee all over your shoe!" It was red, she noticed, and didn't seem to match the rest of his clothing. _Literature department_ , she guessed. She glanced at the book she'd picked up. It seemed to be a volume of poetry. _A poet_ , she revised. _Great. I've tripped over a poet._

She raised her head to meet the stranger's gaze. _A cute poet_ , she added, as he blinked owlishly at her with a pair of huge, dark eyes.

"I . . . I . . . I'm sorry, it's my fault, really, I wasn't looking where I was going, I was, um, distracted, and I really didn't mean, oh, look, I've spilt your coffee, can I buy you another . . ."

All this poured out of the dark-eyed man's mouth in one breath , as he retrieved a pair of reading glasses from the ground and perched them on his nose. "I mean it. Can I buy you coffee? Or tea? Or something?"

 _An adorable poet_ , Professor Song decided. She laughed and stood up, handing the book of poetry back to its discomfited owner. "Please, don't feel bad." He still looked rather shocked. "It's my fault. I was so caught up in my work, I ran smack into you." Now that they were both standing, she looked him over. He was tall, almost painfully thin, and wearing more layers of tweedy brown clothing than she'd expect anyone to wear on such a warm day. _Grad student_ , she thought, _never eats, only comes out of the Stacks to breathe once a week. No, wait, a grad student wouldn't put that much gel in his hair. Undergrad?_ She studied his features. _Could be 25, but, no, those eyes . . . 35? Older?_

It suddenly occurred to her that she was staring deeply into the eyes of a complete stranger, and she hadn't even introduced herself. _Of course, he's staring, too_ , she thought, and there was something very odd about his expression. He looked as if he'd been hit in the head. She decided she'd better say something.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Yes, yes, fine, I think," said the man, still staring.

"Do . . . have we met?" Professor Song asked; it occurred to her that the look on the stranger's face might be a combination of recognition and surprise. _Or he could always look like he's just been caught in a spotlight_ , she mused.

"I, uh, well, I don't know . . . Have we?"

 _The toxic side effects of academia_ , thought Professor Song. _Probably hasn't been out of the Stacks in a month!_ "I don't think so. I think I'd remember meeting you," she said. "Though you may have seen me on campus." She extended her hand. "Professor River Song, Archaeology Department, University of Wallamaloo. Pleased to meet you."

He took her hand and shook it eagerly, his pale face breaking into a grin. "Likewise, I'm sure. I'm the Doctor."

"The Doctor?"

He nodded.

"That's it? Just, 'the Doctor'?"

"It's what people call me."

"What, like a pop star or a wrestler?" The shocked look returned to the Doctor's face. "Just kidding," said Professor Song. "I'll call you whatever you like." _Puppy-Eyes_ _comes to mind_ , she thought. "And, Doctor, if you really are serious about buying me another cup of coffee, I'll take you up on that offer. If I'm so lost in my own little world that I'm tripping over tall, dark, handsome men without even seeing them, I need to take a break!"

"It's this damned grant proposal," she explained as they walked to the campus coffeehouse. "I've got to convince them I need funding for another dig, and it isn't going to be easy. I mean, I could always go for the 'we'll find alien technology that'll set science ahead a thousand years,' angle, but then I'd have Torchwood breathing down my neck, and I couldn't stand that."

"Torchwood?" repeated the Doctor, eyebrows climbing to his hairline again. "That lot's still in business?"

"Been around forever," said Professor Song with a shrug, "can't see they'll ever go away. No, I've got to convince the finance committee that six weeks just wasn't long enough, we've got to go back for another dig, keep clearing that one debris field. But all I've got in the lab . . . that is, all that no one else has . . . is a pile of mis-matched junk, a heap of speculation, and a whole lot of diddly-squat. Well, and the tachyon readings."

"Tachyon readings?"

"Specific type of radiation. Localized to the debris field where we started finding the anomalous artifacts. It's just I'm not sure even that will convince them. They'll probably just call it a fluke. There's so much background radiation on Ghehenna, the place practically glows in the dark. That's why we can only dig for six weeks at a time, and in rad suits at that . . ." Professor Song realized that the Doctor had stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, eyebrows hiding under his cowlick. "Pardon?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"

"Did . . . did you say Ghehenna?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You've been there?"

"Yes."

"You've excavated there?"

"Yes." Professor Song laughed. "You must think I'm potty, putting on a pair of lead-lined knickers and mucking around in the dust chasing myths. Gods and monsters. Angels and devils. My boyfriend thought I was out of my mind. Tried to talk me out of going to Ghehenna. When he couldn't, he dumped me . . ." She narrowed her eyes. "Say, Mercy in Anthro didn't put you up to this? Running into me by accident, buying me coffee . . . She's been trying to set me up with somebody ever since Roger left . . ."

"I assure you, I've never met Mercy in Anthro."

"Pity. You're cute. Wouldn't mind being set up with you."

"We were talking about . . . Ghehenna," he said, as if he found the very name distasteful. "What, exactly are you looking for there? What did you find?"

"Well, what we found, mostly, was enough fragmented Dalek exo-armor to fill a space cruiser. But you can find that on hundreds of worlds, some of them much less dangerous to work on than Ghehenna. No, what we were hoping to find, and what we may have found, was . . . and please don't laugh . . . proof of the existence of the Time Lords."

The Doctor's jaw dropped. Very slightly, but Professor Song caught it.

"I see, you think I'm mad," she said. "Searching for fairy tales, that's what most folk think. Like the archaeologists on Old Earth who went around looking for underground civilizations or the continent of Atlantis."

"I . . . I don't think you're mad," said the Doctor, blinking.

 _My goddess–a girl could fall into those eyes and never get out_ , thought Professor Song in spite of herself. "But you're having second thoughts about that coffee, am I right?" she asked.

"Oh, no, not at all!" he said. "In fact, why don't we sit down together and you can tell me all about your work. It sounds fascinating."

"I'm sure you've heard the legends," Professor Song continued after they had found seats on the coffeehouse terrace. "How the Daleks swept through the galaxy like a plague, killing everything in their path, and every race they encountered was powerless to stop them. Then, when all hope seemed lost, out of the mists of history appeared the Time Lords, like a band of avenging angels . . ." She paused as a waitress walked up to take their order. "I'd like a house-blend coffee, black, one sugar," she said, "and he'll have . . ."

"Tea."

The waitress gave the Doctor an odd look. "What kind? Hot, iced, sweet, unsweet, black, white, green, chai . . ."

"Just tea. Hot tea. In a tea cup. Black, I suppose. And a biscuit, if you have any," the Doctor added.

 _Puppy wants a biscuit_ , Professor Song thought and bit her lip.

"So, legends, you were saying," the Doctor said, leaning towards Professor Song.

"Yes, most scholars consider the Time Lords purely legendary. But even the most far-fetched legends have their basis in fact. A few of us–admittedly a lunatic fringe–believe the stories of Time Lords are based of fragmented records of an actual race, one with technology equal to that of the Daleks. The legends say that the Daleks and Time Lords fought each other to a standstill. Then, realizing that the two forces were equally matched, the Time Lords sacrificed themselves in order to utterly destroy both sides and bring peace to the universe. Now, suppose the kernel of truth at the heart of this story is a race so noble they were willing to die for the sake of all other sentient peoples. We'd owe them our lives! They'd deserve to be remembered . . ."

The Doctor was looking at Professor Song with an absolutely unreadable expression.

"Are you sure you don't think I'm mad?" she asked with a bit of a smile.

"No. Farthest thing from it. I think you're absolutely right. So what did you find–in the debris field?"

"Well, first of all, I have to say that we had no idea what to look for. Even among those historians who believe in the existence of Time Lords as an actual race, there's no agreement as to what they were. Some say they were humanoid, others say they were non-corporeal, others that they were just another breed of Dalek . . ."

The Doctor shuddered visibly.

"Well, that doesn't make a very good story, but there is evidence at some sites of factionalism among the Daleks."

"What do you believe?" the Doctor asked.

Before Professor Song could reply, the waitress brought their drinks and a chocolate-studded biscuit larger than a saucer.

"Oh my," said the Doctor, picking the biscuit up to examine it. "Should I eat it or worship it? It's almost as big as my head!"

Professor Song laughed.

"Would you like some?" asked the Doctor, breaking the pastry into manageable pieces.

"Sure, it's been a while since breakfast." She took a piece and dunked it in her coffee. "Oh, this is good," she said, tasting it. "Want to try?"

"I'll try anything once," said the Doctor, reaching to dip a little biscuit into Professor Song's coffee. "You're right," he said, "that is good! It's brilliant! Might almost convince me to start ordering coffee instead of tea."

They ate and drank in silence for a few minutes. _I can not believe this,_ thought Professor Song. _I'm sitting here sharing my coffee with a complete stranger! A stranger with beautiful eyes, but still . . ."_

"You were about to tell me what you believed," said the Doctor. "About the, erm, Time Lords."

"Well, and this may just be me anthropomorphasizing, but I've always been in the humanoid camp. There are a few isolated myths on various planets that seem to support it. But no tangible proof–until we discovered the tachyon emissions."

"Assuming I know nothing of tachyon emissions, what significance would they have?" asked the Doctor.

"A number of reputable physicists believe that they are given off when the fabric of space time is ruptured by tine-travel. When we first detected the radiation, we realized we might be looking at the remains of a Time Lord craft."

"And then you found?" The Doctor was leaning across the table now, eyes huge.

Professor Song sighed. "Nothing very impressive, I have to admit. Just another debris field, with nothing intact much bigger than a breadbox. But as we started sifting, we noticed two unusual thinks. First, the dust and soil seemed to contain a higher amount of silica that that in other sites. It was like a very uniform, fine sand. Then we started finding fragments of silica-rich material, some transparent, some opaque, that was different from anything we'd seen anywhere else on the planet. It wasn't like any naturally occurring minerals, or and building materials used by the indigenous population. And it wasn't Dalek. They used a metal-impregnated, extruded poly-carbide for anything they built, from their exo-armor to their starships. No, what we were finding was a completely different category of artifact, like nothing anyone had found before. And the really amazing thing was, when we did a spectographic analysis of some of the larger fragments, was that it appeared that these items had not been pressed, or extruded, or created in any way you would think of creating glass or ceramic. They appeared to have been grown!"

Professor Song paused for breath and realized that the Doctor was sitting stock-still, mouth open, eyes roughly the size of his biscuit, eyebrows completely hidden by his hair.

"You see what I'm getting at, then?" Said Professor Song. "We managed to find a few larger pieces, some with remains of wiring or circuitry attached, enough to tell us that we were looking at the remains of some sort of machine. A silicon-based machine that had been grown, like a crystal, or perhaps even a living thing, sitting in the middle of a field saturated with tachyon radiation . . ."

The Doctor found his voice. "Could . . . could I see your lab? See what, what you've found?" He cleared his throat. "I, I mean, if it's not allowed, I understand, but what you're describing sounds so . . ."

"Of course you can visit the lab," said Professor Song, breaking into a wide grin. "We love company down in the crypt! That's what we call it, our lab. The crypt. Because it's in the basement, and because most folk think archaeologists are just a pack of tomb robbers."

Before the Doctor could reply, the waitress returned to their table. "Can I get you anything else?" she asked.

"No, I think we're about to leave," said Professor Song. "Is that all right with you, Doctor?"

"Oh, yes," said the Doctor.

"Then here's your check," said the waitress, laying a slip on the table. "I'll pick it up when you're ready."

Professor Song looked at the Doctor expectantly for a few moments. He stared back pleasantly, and then started.

"Oh, the check," he said, "of course!" He began slapping his pockets. After a frantic search of his overcoat, jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, he admitted, "I'm so embarrassed! I think I left my wallet in my other suit . . . "

 _Grad student!_ thought Professor Song. "It's all right, I'll get it," she said, setting her campus credit chip on top of the check.

The Doctor was blushing visibly. "I'm really, really sorry. I'll make it up. Tell you what, I'll take you to dinner. Tonight, after we've visited the lab. Anywhere you like. Really. I mean it. Anywhere."

Professor Song had to laugh, the Doctor looked so woebegone. "Really, I think I can afford to pay for tea and a biscuit. Don't worry about it."

As they got up to leave, Professor Song noticed that the Doctor slipped the rest of his biscuit into the pocket of his overcoat. _Definitely a grad student,_ she thought as they walked across the campus. _Better not go to dinner with him, or I'll end up picking up that check, too . . .But he's so cute,_ she had to admit. _Not "handsome," exactly, but sort of lost and lonely looking. Those eyes! Like they're a thousand years old in a boy's face. Makes you just want to take him home and_ _make him a good curry or something. That's probably his angle, though. Wanders around campus all pitiful, looking for unsuspecting women to feed him._

They arrived at the Department of Social Sciences and took an elevator to level B2. "Oh, you'll need your pass to actually get into the lab, Doctor," said Professor Song.

"My what?"

"Your campus ID."

"I . . .I don't have one."

"You don't?" asked Professor Song. "I thought you were a graduate student."

"No, I'm, um, just visiting the campus."

"Really? Where are you from? What do you do?"

"Well, I, ah, I travel . . . I'm sort of a . . .a troubleshooter. I solve problems. Wherever they turn up. I'm on holiday, at the moment."

"Oh, you're a geek!"

"Geek?" repeated the Doctor.

"A techie. Computer guru."

"I do work with computers, sometimes. Had a lot of trouble with folks having upgrade problems, a while back."

"Yes, isn't that new OS a bitch?" said Professor Song. "I'm glad I was too lazy to install the software . . . Here we are. You can just come in as my guest. But I'm warning you–I saw you pocket that biscuit. Anything from this lab goes missing, I'm calling campus security, and you can have dinner with them, Pretty Boy."

Before the Doctor could reply, she'd swiped a card through the door lock and was entering the lab. The Doctor followed.

"Jenkins!" Professor Song exclaimed, stopping dead only a few paces into the room.

"He's at lunch," said a female voice from a work station on the far side of the lab.

"He's always at lunch," said Professor Song. "Especially when he know's I'm about to be cross with him." She sighed. "Jenkins is _my_ geek. He runs the scanners and computers. And he thinks he's funny."

Professor Song walked over to a large object standing on a platform. "This, Doctor, is very possibly the best re-constructed suit of Dalek exo-armor anywhere. And, as you can see, Jenkins likes to play jokes with it." She removed a crudely lettered sign hanging from one of three extensions protruding from the metallic carapace. "Homeless–will kill for food," she read.

"Actually, we all thought it was kinda funny," said a thin, dark-skinned young man from another work station.

"I think," said Professor Song, "that Jenkins is actually afraid of this thing. He's always messing with it. Most mornings, I come in and find he's hung a pair of pants over the eyepiece." She gestured to the top extension. "Another time, he hung brassieres all over the sensor nodes. One day, he'd managed to get it into a mumu."

The Doctor, who was still hanging back in the doorway with a decidedly nervous expression, chuckled slightly. "I think I like this Jenkins," he said. "Whistling in the graveyard."

"Come on in," invited Professor Song. "I know Dilbert's a bit intimidating to look at, but he won't bite. Or shoot. The operator's been dead a thousand years."

"Dilbert?" the Doctor repeated.

"Dilbert the Dalek," Professor Song explained. "Another of Jenkins' ideas. Had a 'Name the Dalek' contest on campus. 'Dilbert' was the winning entry."

"Are you certain it's dead?" asked the Doctor, circling the Dalek warily.

"Oh, absolutely," said Professor Song, reaching out to open the armor and revealing an empty cavity inside.

"Nothing, nothing biological, left of the operator, no cellular residue, no DNA strands?" the Doctor asked.

"Nope, nothing. And believe me, I'm sure. Exo-biology was all over this stuff like undergrads at a buffet line once we got it out of decon."

"Um, Professor Song," asked the young man at the worktable, "aren't you going to introduce us to your friend?"

"I'm sorry," she said, "this is the Doctor–nope, no other name, like a pop star–he's a computer guru, he's on holiday, and he's visiting our campus. We ran into each other on the quad, and he expressed an interest in our work. Doctor, this is RayQuan." She indicated the young man. "And this is Sally." She indicated the woman. "They, along with the infamous Abernathy Jenkins, are my graduate assistants. They play with the Dalek bits when I'm not here. Now the good stuff's all in the back, and I don't let anyone near it when I'm not around."

"Her time machine," said RayQuan with a grin at the Doctor.

Professor Song scoffed. "Time machine shrapnel, if that much. But it's enough to make you think." She turned to key in a pass-code to unlock the door into the inner room of the lab. Sally, a round-faced blonde with glasses, came over and whispered to her: "Professor Song, who is this guy?"

"I told you Sally, he followed me home from the quad. I think I'll keep him. I mean, he's probably just trying to get a free meal out of me–I've already paid for his tea–but he's cute, and he's interested in our work, and I've been single way too long."

"But Professor–what if he's a thief? With an antiquities dealer or something?"

"Then if anything goes missing, I will personally strip him and give him a full-body cavity search."

While they were talking, the Doctor had wandered over to RayQuan's workbench. "Careful with that thing," he said, indicating a rod-like assemblage the grad student had partially dismantled. "It might still hold a charge. Those things fire coherent plasma bursts. It's like getting struck by lightning. You live just long enough to feel the searing pain, as if an elephant's just stepped on your chest."

"How would you know?" asked Sally, turning to face him.

"Uh, lightning strikes are pretty well documented," said the Doctor quickly. "I'm just extrapolating."

"I can't imagine the weapon would be active after being buried over a millennium," said Professor Song. "Still, RayQuan, don't go waving it about. And tell Jenkins, when he comes back, not to go hanging things off Dilbert's gun-arm, or he'll think he's been hit by lightning when I'm done with him! Now, Doctor, if you'll come with me, I'll show you the really interesting stuff."

The inner lab was a much smaller room, with a central work table and rows of locked drawers along the walls. "Let me show you one of the better pieces of the translucent silicate material," said Professor Song, opening a drawer and removing a circular piece of pale amber glass. "This is the only one we found intact, but we've got buckets and buckets of fragments. We have no idea what they are, of course. They might have been windows, or hatch covers, or lighting fixtures, or purely decorative. Would you like to hold it?"

Wordlessly, the Doctor extended his hands, and Professor Song placed the glass roundel in it. He leaned against the table and sighed: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Nothing beside remains . . ."

Professor Song smiled gently. "I had to learn that poem in school, too," she said. "It's just stunning, isn't it? A race so advanced they actually grew their ships, rather than building them–but now all that's left is a field of sand and broken glass."

"This . . this is all you found?" asked the Doctor, cradling the roundel in his hands.

"No, but it's what let us know we were dealing with an as-yet undocumented technology. We've got opaque silicate, too, and circuitry, and wiring, as well as a few odd artifacts that may have been the property of the crew. Here, what do you think this is?" She reached into another bin and pulled out a t-shaped object.

"A handle," said the Doctor flatly. "A lever."

"Yes, that's exactly what I thought," said Professor Song, replacing it in the drawer. "And why have handles if you don't have hands? I really think we can prove the Time Lords were, at the very least, corporeal, if not humanoid, if we go back to Ghehenna. Oh, here, let me take that from you. It's a bit heavier than it looks." She lifted the glass roundel from the Doctor's arms and placed it carefully back in its drawer. "Now, this is one of my favorite pieces. We aren't sure what it is," she added, opening another drawer, "but it's quite beautiful. It looks like it's all one piece, but scans indicate a very complex inner structure. I thought it was an ornament at first, a pendant of some sort, but after the scans, we wonder if it's some kind of electronic . . ."

"Key," finished the Doctor softly, as Professor Song handed him the object, a dark, metallic disk as wide as his palm with a deeply incised design on one face.

"Yes, a key. Or it could just be a pendant that used to light up when worn. We have no way of knowing. It's beautiful, and it's a complete mystery . . ." She paused as the Doctor brushed quickly at his eyes. "You're crying!" she exclaimed. _My goddess,_ she thought, _I can't believe there's actually someone besides me moved to tears over this old rubbish_!

"I, I'm sorry," he said, his voice thick. "This is all just a bit . . . overwhelming."

"Don't apologize! Sometimes it makes me cry, too. And you see now, don't you, why I want, why I need, to go back and keep excavating? We may have found all that remains of one of the greatest civilizations this galaxy has ever produced. And it's crumbling into sand. It's tragic!"

"Tragic, yes, a tragedy," repeated the Doctor.

"This is why I became an archaeologist," Professor Song continued. "To give faces to the faceless, voices to the silent. To remind the living of the debt we owe the dead."

"You really are a remarkable woman," said the Doctor with the ghost of a smile.

 _And you are the most incredibly attractive man who's ever walked into my lab,_ thought Professor Song. _What is it about those eyes of yours? I've never seen a man who could look beautiful crying! I swear, if you are a thief or a con artist, I'm likely to let you walk out with the pendant in your pocket and Dilbert under your arm, if I keep looking at those eyes!_

"Thank you," replied Professor Song, pulling her eyes away from the Doctor's. "Now I need to put that back, I'm afraid," she said, extending a hand for the artifact he still held. "It's a beautiful design, though, isn't it? I have no idea of its real significance, having no cultural context to place it in, but I like to think of it as 'infinity embellished'."

The Doctor handed the object back to Professor Song with a rueful chuckle. "Imagine the arrogance of a race thinking they could embellish infinity."

Professor Song laughed in return. "Yes, that is a bit over-the-top, I suppose, but since it was found in the wreckage of a time machine . . . Anyway it's pretty. I'm actually tempted to have it tattooed on my body somewhere."

The Doctor's eyebrows leapt back to the safety of his hairline at that comment. Professor Song opened another drawer, this one larger than most of the others, and, using, both hands, drew out an elongated donut shaped object of smooth, opaque silicate trailing bits of tube and wire. She set it on the worktable as the Doctor's jaw dropped. "This is the largest single piece we've retrieved, and once again we have no clue what it is. RayQuan and I think it might be a collar for a space suit, Sally's withholding judgement, and Jenkins, with his usual lack of propriety, claims it's a toilet seat."

"He's right," said the Doctor in a shocked tone. "It is a toilet seat."

Professor Song started to laugh, until she saw the expression on the Doctor's face. "You really think so?" she said.

He nodded. "Haven't you ever been to one of those posh hotels where the toilets do everything but unzip your trousers? That's what that is."

 _A toilet?_ thought Professor Song. _A posh, time-traveling loo? That's ridiculous. But still . . ._ "If you and Jenkins are right about this, then it proves the Time Lords were humanoid . . ."

"And they were the most powerful race in the universe," said the Doctor, "and now there's nothing left of them but some broken glass and a toilet. I honestly can't decide whether to laugh or cry."

The door to the outer lab opened and a short, round, brown-skinned young man poked his grinning face inside. "Professor Song . . ." he began.

"The infamous Abernathy Jenkins, practical joker extrordinare!" exclaimed the Doctor, rushing towards the grad student and shaking his hand vigorously. "Pleased to make your acquaintance! By-the-by, you're right about that toilet thing. But I'm sure you all have a great deal of work to do, so I guess I'd best be leaving . . ."

 _Oh, no you don't, Pretty Boy!_ "Now, wait just one moment," said Professor Song. "I believe you said something about taking me to dinner. I think I'm going to hold you to that. Jenkins, this is the Doctor," she added to her bewildered student. "He's very interested in our work here, and he believes you may be right about this thing." She pointed to the possible toilet seat. "That does not, however, mean you have permission to roll Dilbert in here to 'unstop it'."

"Unstop . . ." the Doctor repeated. "Oh, you mean with the manipulator arm! Oh, that is funny! Always did look like a plumber's friend to me."

"Yes," said Jenkins, "What else are they going to do with an arm that looks like a plunger?"

"Well, if it's got live current running through it, it can . . ." The Doctor stopped suddenly. Jenkins and Professor Song both stared at him.

"Are you an expert on Daleks, Doctor?" Jenkins asked.

"You told me you were a computer guru," said Professor Song.

"I said I was a problem-solver," replied the Doctor. "Sometimes the problems involve computers, sometimes other things. I have had experience with, um, artifacts, such as Dilbert in there. Tell you what, Professor–I'll take you to dinner, and tell you a little about my work."

"Sounds fair," said Professor Song. "But only because I think you're cute."

Jenkins stifled a snort.

"Now I've got to get this grant proposal typed up before this evening," she continued, "and my students have their own work to continue, so if you can pop back around in a few hours . . ."

"If you let me stay in the lab, I promise I won't be any trouble," said the Doctor.

Professor Song stifled a laugh at his little-boy earnestness. "All right, you can stay. Don't touch anything, don't bother my students, and if anything goes missing . . ."

"You'll strip-search me, I know," said the Doctor. "I overheard you talking to Sally."

The Doctor spent the afternoon sitting in a corner of the lab. True to his word, he did nothing worse than tell an occasional joke of the "how many Daleks does it take to replace a light bulb" variety. Professor Song found that her conversations with him had helped her focus her thoughts enough to complete the grant proposal, though she had to keep her mind from wandering back to his soft, sad eyes and shy smile. _Who the hell is he,_ she wondered, _and what's his angle? Is he just here to spy on our work?_ It didn't seem likely. Even if they got the funding to go back to Ghehenna, they weren't likely to find more than another shipload of shattered glass and broken components. Hardly anything to inspire academic espionage, even if the Dalek wars were a popular field of study. Which they weren't. _Oh what the hell,_ she figured. _Maybe I'll find out what he's up to over dinner. Wonder if he drinks?_

"Doctor, if you're serious about going to dinner with me, I'm ready," she said, hanging her lab coat over a chair. "Sally, be sure all the equipment is turned off. RayQuan, don't stay in here all night, please, I promised your mother I'd look after you. And Jenkins, I'd better not come back in the morning and find my Dalek in drag."

She turned to the Doctor, who offered her his arm.

" _Allons-y?_ " he said with a grin.

As they left the lab, Jenkins said to his associates, "I think the Boss-Lady's found a new boyfriend . . ."

"You know, I've been giving a great deal of thought, all day, as to where we should go for dinner," the Doctor was saying. "First I thought perhaps I should let you pick, but then I felt like, if you really want to know more about me, that I should choose, so then, of course, I had to decide, and . . ."

 _Starts off quiet enough, but once he gets going!_ Professor Song thought. She laughed out loud.

" . . . I wanted it to be somewhere I enjoyed, and . . . What's so funny?"

"You!" she said honestly. "Do you even need to breathe? I've not got a word in since we left the lab!"

His face fell. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I hadn't realized, it's one of my worst habits, it's just when I get excited there's so much stuff going on in my head, sometimes I think it might explode . . ."

Professor Song stopped in her tracks, laughing uncontrollably. "Ah, oh, well, we can't have your head exploding, can we!" she finally got out.

"No, no I guess we can't . . ." the Doctor said with a chuckle that grew into a series of full-fledged whoops.

A group of freshmen crossing the quad paused and looked curiously at the two academics leaning on each other, collapsed in hysterical giggles, but said nothing to them. The ways of faculty were inscrutable.

"Oh, oh my, this . . . this is amazing," gasped the Doctor. "I haven't laughed like that since . . . oh, I don't know, quite a long time!"

"Neither have I," admitted Professor Song. "So–where are we going for dinner?"

"Do you like fondue?"

"Fondue?"

"Little bits of stuff on forks . . . Is that too messy? I like messy. Seems more intimate, somehow, but maybe that's too much for a first date . . ."

"If this is a 'date'," said Professor Song, "then it's our second–the first was this morning, and you were already dipping your biscuit in my coffee . . ."

"Ah, well, usually I'm the last fellow to, erm, dip my biscuit, on a first date," said the Doctor, noticably flustered.

"You're blushing!" said Professor Song.

"I, um, well, you were the one who said . . ."

They collapsed into giggles again.

"No one . . . has . . . ever," gasped Professor Song, " . . . made me laugh . . . that hard . . . talking about biscuits and coffee!"

"I'll never look at a, a cup of coffee the same way again," the Doctor agreed, snorting and clutching at his chest with both hands.

"So now that we've established that we're two lonely middle-aged scholars who've both been sleeping alone far too long," said Professor Song, wiping a tear from her eye, "where are we going for dinner? Fondue sounds fine to me, but I'll go anywhere you want."

"Anywhere?"

"Anywhere. Absolutely anywhere."

"Oh, you are in for a treat, then!" said the Doctor, taking her by the hand. "Professor River Song, Department of Archaeology, University of Wallamaloo, prepare to have your mind blown!"

" _Free for use of public . . ._ what the hell is this and where did it come from?" asked Professor Song, reading the lettering on the battered blue cabinet the Doctor had led her to. "It wasn't here yesterday morning. Is it some kind of sculpture?"

"It's been on display in the Louvre before," said the Doctor, fishing a key out of his pocket and unlocking the door.

"You're going inside it?" she asked.

"Of course. Got to find my wallet."

"You keep your wallet in this thing?"

"All my stuff," said the Doctor as he disappeared inside the box. Professor Song stood blinking for a moment. The Doctor put his head back out.

"You coming?" he asked.

"I think I'll wait until you find your wallet."

"Suit yourself. I'll leave the door open," he said, vanishing again.

 _He must be absolutely barking mad!_ thought Professor Song. _Keeps his wallet in a big blue box with a light on top? This has got to be some kind of joke. That's it. Play a joke on poor, desperate Professor Song. If Jenkins is behind it, I swear I'll make him wear a pair of Dalek sensor nodes as a brassier for a week!_ She glanced around the quad, searching for hidden cameras. _What's taking him so long? How can you possibly lose a wallet in a box this size?_

Shaking her head, Professor Song followed the Doctor into the box.

"You were right, you know," said the Doctor from across the room. "About nature of the silicate materials. These capsules were grown, from single crystals, like living things."

Professor Song shut her mouth, only to have it drop open again. "This . . . you . . .where ?" She turned to place her hand on the wall, on one of a series of dozens of pale amber glass circles, each lit from within.

"It's . . . it's _intact_!" she gasped. "It's intact, it's whole, it's . . . it's still functioning! It's on-line!" She moved away from the wall and approached the hexagonal console in the center of the room with something approaching reverence.

"Please, Professor, don't touch . . . Well, all right, you can touch that, it's just the door," the Doctor said as Professor Song reached out to grasp a handle remarkably similar to the one in her lab. She shifted it back and forth a few times, looking over her shoulder to watch the doors open and shut.

"And, and, all this must exist somehow outside of regular space time, and the box, the door, is just a portal. An interface with reality," she said.

Now the Doctor's jaw dropped. "That's brilliant!" he exclaimed. "You're brilliant! I have never, repeat never, had anyone just walk in here and immediately grasp transdimensional engineering!"

"Well it's rather obvious isn't it?" said Professor Song. "I mean, you can't very well fit this huge room in that little box, not in any Euclidean sense. For a race capable of time travel, this is child's play."

The Doctor just grinned like an idiot.

"And you . . ." Suddenly Professor song's expression shifted from wonder to fury. "You've been toying with me! Me with my buckets of sand and broken glass, and my, my toilet! You've got the find of the century, no, the millennium, here, and you didn't breathe a word!"

"I haven't been toying with you, I swear!" said the Doctor, hands raised in apology.

"And where did you get it? I've never heard of a museum, or university, or even a private collector, with something like this . . . How come Torchwood doesn't have it?"

"They probably know better than to try and take it from me."

"You own this?"

"I live here. This is my home."

Professor Song's expression shifted back to shock. "Where in the galaxy did you find it? How did you get it running? How do you keep it running? How . . ."

"Hold on, hold on, Professor, one question at a time," put in the Doctor. "In reverse order: with great difficulty, it was on-line when I took it, and I found it in a repair bay on Gallifrey long before the War."

"You took it . . . before the war . . . Gallifrey? But . . . but that's the mythical name . . ."

"It's not a myth," said the Doctor softly. "At least, it wasn't. Not when I was born."

 _This can't be happening!_ Professor Song thought. She pinched her arm.

The Doctor caught her gesture and smiled. "You aren't dreaming. I'm as real as you are. Here. Take my hand."

She took his long, slender fingers in her own. They were cool to the touch.

"Long, long ago, my ancestors had metabolic processes and a body temperature equivalent to that of humans," the Doctor explained, "but they altered themselves, slowing their base metabolism to extend their lifespan. "

"How old are you?" Professor Song asked, staring into the Doctor's eyes.

"Over 900 years. Now, place you hands here, and here," he said, setting her palms on his chest.

"What am I . . . what . . . you've got . . . on both sides," she said, eyes opening wide.

"Yes. Two hearts. And my species evolved with them. Can't understand why more species didn't."

Professor Song drew her hands away. "I can't believe . . ."

"But you can believe," said the Doctor, "because you've seen and touched all this, and you know it's real."

"Why, why didn't you say anything? In the lab? Oh my goddess, I feel such a fool . . ."

"You aren't a fool, you're a brilliant scientist with a great gift for making connections, so long as the evidence is trustworthy. I didn't say anything in the lab because, if I had, if I'd said 'Say, I am a Time Lord, and I've got my time machine parked outside, wanna see it?', you'd have called campus security to come out with the butterfly nets and an I-love-me jacket and hauled me away to the nearest psychiatric ward."

"So you ask me to dinner?" Professor Song asked, incredulous.

"The offer still stands," said the Doctor with a shy smile, "though I suppose whether or not you'll accept it depends on your view of interspecies dating. Myself, I've had to adapt to it as a necessity."

"How many of you are there?" asked Professor Song. "Time Lords, I mean."

"You mean besides me? None," said the Doctor sadly. "I'm an endangered species of one."

Professor Song gasped. "And I just took you down into the lab, and . . . You must think I'm a ghoul! Ghehenna isn't a 'dig' to you, it's a tomb! And I've desecrated it . . ."

"No, no, I don't feel that way, well, not exactly, not that you've done anything wrong. You're just curious, and I don't mind, really, I'm pleased that someone actually cares!"

"Is that why you came to the University? Because of my work?"

"To tell the truth, Professor Song, I had no idea I was going to meet you today, or what your field was. Actually, I think she," he said, gesturing to the console, "had more to do with this than I did."

"She?"

"The TARDIS. The ship. Name's an acronym, stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. She's alive, and intelligent, and she probably sensed that pretty pendant you've got down in the lab."

"You cried when you saw it–do you know what it is?"

"Yes . . . But I'm afraid I can't possibly explain any more on an empty stomach," the Doctor said, beginning to move around the central console, turning dials and flipping buttons. "Haven't had anything but tea and biscuits for at least three days, can't remember, I forget to eat sometimes when I'm working."

"Yes, I'm the same way," said Professor Song. "You said you were going to tell me about your work?" _What sort of job would the last surviving member of a mythical race have, anyway?_ she wondered. _And how can this be happening?_

"Yes, yes, plenty of time to talk shop, but right now, I'm famished!" he said. "Oh, brace yourself, she's feeling her age and gets a bit creaky when you roust her . . ."

"Ah!" cried Professor Song, putting her hands over her ears as the column in the center of the console began to rise and fall with a series of agonized wheezes.

"Oh, it's not so bad as all that!" protested the Doctor. "There, there, girl," he said, patting the console, "don't take it personally. She's a newb. Pretty soon, though, she'll realize that's the most beautiful sound in the universe!"

"What, because it means you're leaving?"

"Hey!"

Professor Song laughed. "Sorry. I just have a feeling you're about to complicate my life by a factor of about twenty."

"Oh, much higher than that," the Doctor admitted. "Now, let's see, last time I was there was July, 1989, don't want to run into myself, I was really out of shape and my girlfriend was the jealous sort, try October, same year, the service shouldn't have gone down too much . . . You'll love this place. They serve red wine in baby bottles."

"Baby bottles?"

"Yes. No idea why, but it's fun."

"So, I says to Jack, I says, 'if _someone_ wasn't compensating for _something_ , why are the Daleks shaped like that?"

"Oh, no, you're worse than Jenkins!" said Professor Song with a laugh. _This can't be happening,_ she thought for the thousandth time, _but it is. And I'm loving every moment!_

"But, but wait," said the Doctor, gesticulating with a half-empty plastic bottle of wine. "So Jack says to me, 'I thought I was the only person to think that about them.' Then I say, 'no, Jack, you're just the first one to think that and then wonder if you can kill them all through exhaustion!' And Jack, he says, 'Whoa, hold on there Doctor! Even I have my standards. I'm pretty open minded, but I draw the line at Daleks!"

"I should hope so!" said Professor Song, giggling. "Here, there's a bite of cheesecake left, do you want it?"

"Oh, no, no, I couldn't possibly, no, well, maybe, just one more bite . . . Ooh, this is so good!"

"You've got chocolate on your face."

"Where?"

"Right there." She leaned close to him and dabbed his chin with a napkin. _Those eyes!_ she thought.

"What are you thinking?" he asked her.

"That you have beautiful eyes," she said honestly. "What are you thinking?"

"Well, first, that I've probably had too much to drink," he answered, "since I've sunk to telling Jack Harkness stories. Second, that I've eaten so much tonight I won't want to even look at food again for the next couple days. And third," he said, looking deep into Professor Song's eyes, "that I really, really, really want to kiss you."

"So why don't you?"

"This is only our first date."

"Second. Remember the biscuit."

"Mmm. Yes. The biscuit . . ."

His lips were cool, and soft, and tasted of chocolate and red wine. He wrapped his long arms around her and pulled her close. She found herself pressed against his lean body, running her hands through his hair, mildly surprised that whatever he used in it still left it soft enough to tousle.

Suddenly the Doctor pulled away from her. "I'm sorry," he said.

"For what? That was amazing!"

"Really?"

"Of course, with 900 years experience and who knows how many women to practice on, you ought to be a good kisser."

"Would you like to go dancing? I know a good club . . ." said the Doctor, hopping up from their booth.

 _Non sequitur much?_ thought Professor Song. "I was joking," she said. "I didn't mean to insult you. I mean, about the women. Or your age. If you're sensitive."

"No, no, I'm not insulted, it's just . . . well, we could sit here and snog for the rest of the night, I mean if you want to, but it's rather public, and . . ."

"I'd love to go dancing with you." She smiled and took his hand.

"Wonderful," he said, pulling her to her feet and drawing her back into his embrace. "Although I warn you, I've been told I resemble a giant chicken on the dance floor."

"I'm sure I've danced with worse." She stood on tip-toes, he bent forward, and they kissed again.

"Mmm . . . I thinks this works better when we're sitting," said the Doctor.

"Not my fault if you're built like an extension ladder . . .Nice bum for a skinny white boy, though," she added, giving it an experimental squeeze.

"Ah! . . . If we're going to go, we'd better . . ."

"Yes, I suppose you're right." Professor Song unwrapped her arms from the Doctor with a sigh. "Are you forgetting something?"

"My overcoat!" said the Doctor, retrieving it from the booth.

"And . . ."

"Uh, the rest of my clothes are still on, aren't they?"

"For the moment, yes."

"Then what . . . Oh, yes, money! . . . where did I . . .ah, here, my wallet!" he cried triumphantly, producing it from a trouser pocket. "And, look, there's money in it, and it's even French. Wonder how much I owe?"

"Beats me. Not my century. Not even my planet."

The Doctor just threw a wad of bills on the table and laughed.

"Oh, you are unbelievable!" said Professor Song as she limped back to the TARDIS, shoes in her hand. "I've never seen anyone dance like that . . ."

"I adore dancing. It's almost like being able to make love with a whole room full of people without all that awkward morning-after baggage."

Professor Song just stopped and laughed. "Oh, stop, you're killing me! I'm exhausted! How do you do it? That conga line you had going down the street . . ."

"It's the two hearts," said the Doctor. "Increased stamina."

"Ooh, the thoughts I'm thinking now . . ."

"I thought you said you were exhausted."

"Never that tired, Pretty Boy," she said, reaching up to take his face between her hands and kissing him.

"Besides," she added, "You still haven't shown me around this ship of yours. You could show me the toilet . . ."

The Doctor's nose wrinkled. "Well, I suppose I could, but I'm not about to demonstrate . . ."

"Oh, goddess not, talk about a buzzkill!" laughed Professor Song. "No, I just figure the loo's got to be pretty close to the bedroom . . ." She wrapped her arms about his waist.

"Oh, you can't possibly see my bedroom!"

"Why not?"

"It's a mess. I'm a slob. There are socks and pants everywhere, and the bed's not made . . ."

"Or are you just trying to avoid awkward baggage?"

"I should take you home," said the Doctor, pulling away from her and unlocking the TARDIS. "You've got important work to do, a grant proposal to submit, an excavation to organize. If you don't get the funds from the university, I'll get you there. Somehow. I promise."

"All right," said Professor Song and followed him inside.

"So, living quarters through this door, I assume?" she asked once the TARDIS was in flight.

"Oh, no, no, no you can't! It's a mess, I'm a slob, I'm rubbish at housekeeping, and I've been traveling alone . . ."

"And I'm an archaeologist, and I'm used to sifting through rubble." Professor Song pushed open the door and began walking down the corridor. "Let's see–here's a bedroom, can't be yours, it's all pink and ruffly."

"No, guest quarters," said the Doctor, "hasn't been used since before the War, all the rooms on this corridor are guest quarters, none in use now."

"You're all alone in this great big rattling tub? Well, I suppose you would have to be. You poor thing, no wonder you look so lost."

"I'm not lost. I know exactly where I am."

"You know what I mean," she said, reaching out to brush his cheek. "You can take me home now, if that's really what you're more comfortable with."

"I, um, I did say I'd show you the toilet, and it's through my, um, bedroom."

"That's more like it." She followed him down the hall and around a corner, only to stop before a pair of ornate doors.

"Those symbols," she gasped, "they're exactly the same as . . . I feel so stupid! Is that your personal coat of arms?"

"Arms of my House," said the Doctor. "The Great Seal of Rassilon, emblem of House Prydonia. I was educated in the Prydonian House, at the Academy of Time Lords."

"And I was going to have it tattooed . . ."

"I wouldn't mind. I mean, depending on where you had it. And whether or not you let me see it. Do you want to come in? Mind, it's a wreck!"

"You weren't joking!" Professor Song laughed at the sight of the sea of detritus covering the Doctor's floor: mostly books and papers, interspersed with random take-out boxes and wadded-up socks. "How many centuries worth of strata am I looking at here?"

"Aw, it's not that bad!" the Doctor protested. "Can't be more than a decade or so!"

"That's a beautiful bed," she said, admiring the vast, carved, four-poster affair hung with red and gold velvet that took up most of the room.

"It's from earth, actually. Italy. Renaissance. Belonged to one of the Medicis. Actually, to one of his mistresses. Until his wife found out, had him send the poor girl packing, sold off her villa and all her things. Sort of a fifteenth-century jumble sale."

"Oh, and look over here, your dressing table. As an archaeologist, I can not resist . . . Let's see. Nice collection of neckties, a razor–so you shave?"

"About once a week."

"Only once a week?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I told you. Low metabolism."

"And this is a bottle of something called . . . Hairapy?"

He blushed. "I'm sorry, I'm vain about my hair, I admit it."

She laughed. "And another great mystery is solved! Really, I thought that, that crest there, might be a naturally occurring phenomenon."

"No, I, uh, actually have to work at it. I suppose you think it looks silly."

"No, actually, I think it looks precious."

"You think I look precious?"

"I think you look like a lonely little schoolboy dressed up in his daddy's suit. Especially when you put on your glasses. You are damned near irresistible. I swear, when I saw you reading that menu in the restaurant, I was about two seconds away from grabbing you by the tie and ravishing you right there in the booth!"

The Doctor said nothing, though his face maintained the shocked expression Professor Song was learning to know well.

"Now, I really should give more attention to the bed, here," she said, walking over to it. "I wonder what I might find, if I were to excavate? Relics of past mates?"

"Please . . . I've been living alone here for ages!"

"Well, we ought to fix that problem, shouldn't we?" she said, grabbing him by his lapels and kissing him firmly on the mouth. He squeaked, just a little, and then said nothing as she dragged him down into the bed on top of her.

"River," asked the Doctor, pausing on her doorstep the next morning, "May, may I please see you again?"

"You have to ask?"

"I'm, I'm not asking as a Time Lord. I'm asking as, as a lonely academic, married to his work, who's been alone for far too long."

"Of course," she said. "Come any time. And pretty soon, that ghastly wheeze your machine makes will sound like music." She kissed his cheek. "Until next time," she said, then went into her apartment and closed the door.

At a quarter past eleven that morning, Professor River Song entered her lab to find a plastic Hawaiian lei hanging from Dilbert the Dalek's eyestalk.

"Jenkins," she said. "Care to explain?"

"It is not drag, is it?" said Jenkins. "You said no drag. You did not say . . ."

"I know what I said. Now I just want to know, are you trying to imply something, Jenkins?"

"Implying? What would I possibly be implying, Professor Song?"

"How was your date, Professor?" asked Sally, coming out from behind her work station.

"Oh, very nice. The Doctor took me to dinner . . . oh, by the way, you'll be seeing him again. He's coming on the second dig with us."

"There will be a second dig?" asked Jenkins.

"One way or another. He's going to be coming to translate any inscriptions we find."

"That's great news, Professor!" said RayQuan.

"So, you went to dinner," prompted Sally. "Then what?"

"Then we went dancing, and then, before he brought me home, we stopped for a while at his place. For coffee and a biscuit."

2Artifacts:

Part Two

 _I must be the biggest grade-A, number one chump in the universe,_ thought Professor River Song with a sigh. _Just hang a great big sign around my neck: Sucker. Fool. Idiot . . ._

"Professor Song? I've just finished loading the last of the special equipment you requested. I'm going to run through the pre-flight checks, and we'll be ready for take off in 15 minutes."

She didn't even look up at the tall, burly, ginger-haired young man standing next to her. "Thank you, Bob," she said. "Doubt we'll need it, but it never hurts to be prepared."

"Is your team ready to go?"

She nodded. "Yes. Just let me finish my coffee." _He never called, never wrote, never even sent flowers . . . River, you are a moron! As if . . ._

As the pilot disappeared up the ramp into the mid-sized cargo vessel _Lupine_ , a short, stout man in drab khaki came puffing up the tarmac. "Professor! Professor Song! Do you have moment?"

"For you, Jenkins, anytime." _My coffee's cold. Oh what the hell._

He set a datapad on the table before her. "Professor, is your friend the Doctor still planning on joining us?"

"You don't see him around, do you? We're taking off in fifteen minutes. So I guess the answer is no."

"Ah. I am sorry. I was hoping to be able to speak to him. Professor, if is not improper for me to ask, how much do you know about him?"

 _Obviously not enough_. "Why do you ask, Jenkins?"

"I may be wrong, Professor, but I have been doing research, and I have made some interesting discoveries. I believe this Doctor may be more than he appears. There is an organization, LINDA Galactic, that has been recording folklore and first hand accounts for centuries . . ."

"Folklore, Jenkins? What sort?"

"Stories about a being, an entity, calling himself the Doctor. He looks human, but is not."

"So what is he?"

"The stories vary. Some say that he is a god, or an angel, or a demon. But the most believable of the accounts, the best documented, say he is a Time Lord, who survived the war with the Daleks and now travels time and space fighting injustice and cruelty."

"A superhero. I see." River kept her expression neutral. "And you think this entity has decided to inspect our work on Gehenna, to make certain we aren't desecrating the bones of his ancestors?"

"It is not entirely outside the realm of possibility, Professor."

"Well, Jenkins, just supposing what you say were true, then I think the Doctor would probably value his privacy, and it would behoove you to keep your speculations to yourself. Or at least it would keep you from looking foolish."

"I understand, Professor Song. I will say nothing. But you may keep my findings," he added, indicating the datapad. "I am going on-board now."

River picked up the datapad, torn between reading whatever it contained and throwing it across the tarmac to smash into a million tiny bits. Before she could make up her mind, another of her students approached her.

"Professor?"

"Yes, RayQuan?"

"The medic, the historian, and the undergraduates are all on board. When will be leaving?"

She sighed. "Once I finish my coffee. Where's Sally?"

"Ah, looking over some of her equipment. And speaking of which . . ."

"Yes, I wanted to thank you for all the extra work you've done preparing for this dig. Everything's ready and on board."

"Thank you, Professor. Though I hope you don't mind my saying . . ."

"You hope I'm being over-cautious, I know."

"Professor Song!" called a woman's voice from the gangplank.

"I'm coming, Sally!" River said, rising reluctantly and dumping the remains of her coffee into a reclaimator. "Keep your shirt on!"

"No, Professor Song, look!" Sally pointed across the tarmac towards the entrance to the landing field.

River whipped her head around so fast, a strand of her auburn curls got caught in her mouth. A lean, lanky figure was striding across the tarmac, coattails billowing out behind him. Her heart caught. As he approached, she could see he held his arms behind his back. He was whistling. She stood up, struggling with the urge to run and fling her arms around him. And possibly slap him.

"Am I late?" asked the Doctor, face alight with a boyish grin.

"How could _you_ possibly be late?" said River, hoping she didn't look as flustered as she felt.

"You'd be surprised," the Doctor said. "Here, these are for you," he said, producing an enormous bouquet of roses from behind his back with a flourish. "Might not be the most appropriate flowers, but they are traditional, and I don't really know what you prefer . . ."

River took the flowers and inhaled deeply. "Oh, they're beautiful!"

"And these are for you, too," he added wink, revealing two huge, heart-shaped boxes of chocolate he'd held in his other hand.

"You brought two . . . "River burst into laughter and, thrusting the bouquet into the hands of a very surprised RayQuan, threw her arms around the Doctor's neck and kissed him.

 _My students are watching!_ admonished part of her mind, but the thought was quickly supplanted by, _He had marmalade for breakfast . . ._

"I missed you too, River," the Doctor said gently when their lips finally parted.

"So why didn't you contact me?" She took one step back. "I'll allow you to charm me with candy and flowers this once, but if you ever expect to join me on another dig, you will arrive more than five minutes before launch!"

"We're launching in five minutes?" the Doctor asked. "Sorry, I guess I did cut it a bit close. Oh, and I took the liberty of . . ."

"Professor Song!" called the pilot from the gangplank, where a group of curious students were staring at their teacher. "I was just giving a last look 'round the hold, and there's this big, blue, wooden . . ."

"Cabinet, yes, I know," River said, with only the tiniest dirty look at the Doctor. "It belongs to the Doctor here, it contains all his equipment, he . . ."

"Transmatted it on board," finished the Doctor. "To save time. Since I was running late."

"And now that he's here," said River, "We're leaving. Everybody: get in, strap down, shut up, and hang on!"

RayQuan stood staring expectantly at her, arms still full of flowers.

"Oh, and I don't suppose anyone thought to pack a vase?" she asked.

"I have two. On my altar," volunteered Jenkins.

"Great. RayQuan, give the sacrificial offerings to Jenkins, please. We're going to need all the divine intervention we can get."

As they strapped themselves into a pair of acceleration chairs, River turned to the Doctor and said, in a voice too low for the rest of the party to hear, "I'd like to get one thing straight, Pretty Boy. Once we get to Ghehenna, you'll be digging, sifting, and sorting with everyone else. I don't plan to treat you any differently from the rest of my team . . ."

"I didn't expect you to . . ."

"Except, of course, that I'm likely to grab your arse when we pass on board," she added with a smirk. "That and, if the opportunity presents itself, I'm going to shag you cross-eyed. Not that it's likely to," she admitted as the Doctor's eyebrows soared heavenward, "since I'm sharing a cabin with Sally, and I've got you slated to bunk with Jenkins. Although that doesn't seem like such a brilliant idea any more . . ."

"Why? Is he likely to sacrifice chickens on that altar of his?"

River laughed. "Not hardly. He's a Hindu. Vegetarian. No, he's been reading through the archives of some organization called LINDA . . ."

"No!" the Doctor gasped. He fumbled to unstrap his restraints, turned backwards in his seat, rose to his knees, and bellowed:

"JENKINS!"

 _Damn, but he can yell for a skinny guy!_ River thought.

"Yes, Doctor?" answered Jenkins nervously from a seat a few rows back.

"You haven't contacted those LINDA people, have you?"

"N,no sir!"

"Don't. Ever. Is that understood?"

"Perfectly, sir!"

The Doctor collapsed back into his seat and re-fastened his restraints.

"Would it be too much to ask," said River, "what's so terrible about LINDA?"

"They're an organization of crackpots and stalkers," said the Doctor. "All the females and about half the males want me to impregnate them. I avoid them. Scrupulously." He paused and gave River a hard look. "You haven't been telling people about . . ."

"Of course not! They'd think I'd gone potty! No, Jenkins just came up with this by himself. He's frighteningly clever, you know."

"Well, then I guess I'd better have a talk with him . . ." The Doctor sighed and reached for one of the boxes of chocolate he'd brought.

"Aren't those supposed to be mine?" teased River. He offered her some.

"No, not before we cross the warp barrier. These little ships get a bit bumpy."

"What's this thing called again?"

"The _Lupine_."

"The what?"

" _Lupine_. It's some sort of mountain flower. Sister ships are the _Columbine_ and the _Eidelveiss_."

"Oh. For a moment there, I thought it was some sort of Harry Potter reference . . ."

Once the _Lupine_ had safely crossed the warp barrier and been set on autopilot, River called the entire team into the crew lounge for a briefing.

"All right, first things first, introductions. This charming gentleman who arrived so fashionably late . . ." here she shot a little glance at the Doctor ". . . is the Doctor. No, he does not have another name. Yes, obviously, he and I are seeing each other. No, that's not why I brought him along. I brought him because he's a brilliant scholar and has offered to assist in translating any inscriptions we may uncover." She noticed the Doctor opening his mouth and promptly intervened. "I'd like to get through the introductions _quickly_ , so any additional comments or questions, please save them. To my left is RayQuan Jones, specialist in ancient technology, particularly weapon systems. Beside him are Sally Greenpeace, graduate student in pre-human history, Kitty Kincaide, ship's medic, and Professor Robert Reynolds, of the history department. Robert, or Bob as he prefers to be called, will be documenting the dig for the University archives. On the right, next to the Doctor, are Abernathy Jenkins, computer systems specialist, and Megan Carter, Juan Gonzalez, Po Chang, and Summer Leiberman, all undergraduates in history. This is their first off-world excavation."

River paused for a smattering of applause before continuing, "Standing behind me is Captain Robert O'Sullivan, our pilot. He also prefers to be called Bob, but would like you to know that, to minimize confusion, he answers to 'Sideshow'. Don't ask. I don't know."

The Doctor began speaking before River could stop him. "It's a reference to 20th Century philosopher and satirist Matthew Groening, isn't it? Brilliant! Don't have a cow, man!"

"Ah-hem."

"Oh, sorry River, ah, Professor. Won't happen again."

 _Like I'll believe that._ "To continue: We will be arriving at Ghehenna in approximately five days. Once we land, we have six weeks slated for excavation. Why only six weeks? Because, in a nutshell, Ghehenna is deadly. The rivers and seas, such as they are, are toxic. The soil is radioactive. We will be wearing full spacesuits at all times when we leave the ship, and we will undergo a full 45 minute decontamination procedure every time we return. We will not remain on the planet's surface after dark, as the winds there get up to 50 KPH at night. We will not remain out if it rains–the rain contains high concentrations of acid, which will break down our suits after no more than fifteen minutes. Even with the suits on, six weeks is as long as its been determined we'll be able to work safely. So–we make every day count."

River looked over her team, all paying close attention, with the notable exception of the Doctor, who seemed to have developed a sudden fascination with the overhead lights.

"ADHD much, sweetie?" she asked. Jenkins stifled a snort and the undergraduates snickered.

"Uh, sorry, Ghehenna's a deathtrap, yes, got that."

"I am not saying anything," River continued, "that hasn't been said before, but it doesn't hurt to have it all spelled out neatly one more time before we begin. The area we're interested in is approximately two kilometers in diameter. Now, seeing as it would be impossible to fully excavate an area of that size in six weeks, we'll be focusing on the area closest to where we found the largest items on the last dig."

"You mean the toilet seat?" asked the Doctor.

"The toilet seat, the medallion, and the other larger pieces." _Is he trying to drive me crazy?_ "We'll be using a standard Peabody-Emmerson grid pattern: excavate each square meter down to bedrock, sifting and cataloging as we go. With any luck, we'll find something a little better for the museum than the Robo-Loo." She smiled a little at that.

The Doctor put up his hand.

"Yes?"

"What, exactly, is going to be done with the artifacts you bring back?"

 _I suppose he's got a right to ask._ "There are plans to dedicate a new wing in the University museum to our finds. Considering that this exhibit will be the only one of its kind, I sincerely hope we find something with a little more, shall we say, dignity."

"Yes, it would be rather rotten luck to be the most advanced race in the universe, only to die and be remembered by nothing but your plumbing," agreed the Doctor glumly.

"I'll be going over tools, equipment, and procedures, in more depth over the course of our flight. In the meantime, I'd like to remind everyone that quarters on board here are a bit cramped, so be respectful of your colleagues and especially your bunkmates. Jenkins, that means no incense."

"I would not dream of it, Professor!"

"There are no set mealtimes, though I'd hope we'd at least gather here once a day around suppertime. I'm afraid the food is all pre-packaged. I have made certain that over half of it is vegetarian."

Jenkins and Summer Leiberman smiled at that.

"Let's see, I think that's it for the general announcements. If you like, you may go and settle into your quarters. I'm going to be here for a while. Any questions, ask me any time. The only stupid question is the one which isn't asked."

The undergraduates' hands all flew into the air.

Jenkins was kneeling before the tiny makeshift shrine in his cabin when the Doctor walked in.

"Oh, no, don't get up," the Doctor said, folding his overcoat and placing it on the upper bunk.

Jenkins got up anyway. "You may borrow the vases to return the flowers to Professor Song, if you like." The twenty-four roses were overwhelming a statuette of a four-armed entity with the body of a fat human and the head of an elephant.

"Yes, I do think I'll take them over to her cabin. But first, I wanted to ask . . ."

"I am so very, very sorry . . ."

"No, no, don't apologize. I'm just curious–what made you suspicious about me?"

"Well, for a man who had just walked into our lab for the first time, you seemed very knowledgeable. And, as I was running some tests that evening, I detected residual tachyon radiation on the quad . . ."

"Yes, I guess if you knew what to look for . . ."

"So I went to the University Library computer, and did a Boolean search. Time Lord plus Doctor."

The Doctor laughed out loud. "Jenkins, I like you! You are a very clever boy!" He paused and took a look at Jenkins' altar. "That's Ganesha, isn't it?"

"Yes. The Remover of Obstacles. I thought he might be of help to us."

"Jenkins, do you . . ."

"Believe in the literal existence of an elephant-headed being with omnipotent powers? No. But do I believe in a divine creative force beyond human comprehension? Yes. Ganesha is simply one way my ancestors attempted to know the unknowable. After all, Doctor, simply because a thing has never been seen does not mean it does not exist. You of all people should know that."

"Ah, right. I'll just take these flowers to Professor Song . . ."

 _Gotta love those undergrads!_ thought River as she headed to her cabin three hours later. Answering questions had turned into a discussion of the previous dig, speculation on what the next one would reveal, and a general bulls***ing session.

The first thing she noticed on entering her room was the roses on the washstand, filling the cramped room with their fragrance. Then she noticed a slip of paper lying on her pillow.

Picking it up, she saw that it someone had actually gone to the trouble of writing on it, by hand.

It was a poem.

 _With parched lips, I stand upon love's brink,_

 _To stand or fall the question I must face._

 _I yearn to kneel and take that first sweet drink,_

 _But fear of loss doth freeze me in my place._

 _For well I know the risks that lovers take:_

 _The pains when passion's currents run too strong,_

 _The separations cruel that hearts shall break,_

 _And anguish when a love once true is gone._

 _But strong as burns the warning in my mind,_

 _Stronger yet's the burning of my thirst_

 _When I behold thy face, so fair and kind,_

 _I dare to brave the pain, and loss, and worse,_

 _And I shall do what I have ever done—_

 _Plunge in, tho' in love's River I may drown._

River left her room holding the poem in a slightly sweaty palm, only to find her way down the corridor blocked by a lanky figure leaning against one bulkhead.

"Hello," said the Doctor.

River felt her face flush. "Did, did you write this?" she said, holding up the poem.

"Yes."

"I mean, you actually composed it?"

"Yes."

"I knew you were a poet, the moment I laid eyes on you. You wrote this for me?"

"Yes."

"Well, I . . ." She suddenly found herself at a loss for words. "I've never had anyone write an erotic sonnet based on my name before."

"Do you like it?"

"Yes. Yes, very much."

He moved closer. "River, how long has it been since you last saw me?"

"Since I saw you? About four months . . . Three months, three weeks, and four days. Since you took me to Paris."

"And I haven't been to see you in that time?" He wrapped his arms about her. "Three months, three weeks, and four days I've wasted, time I could have spent with you . . ." He stroked her cheek, then leaned down and kissed her.

She forced herself to pull away. "This is the main corridor, someone's likely to come along any moment . . ."

"We could go down to the hold . . ." he murmured, nuzzling her ear. "Check on my equipment . . ."

"Sounds like a plan . . ."

The voyage to Ghehenna, though certainly not uneventful, passed without any difficulties more serious than trying to convince the Doctor that he needed to eat once a day, no matter how much he disliked the packaged rations. He was an instant favorite with the undergraduates. His repertoire of rude drinking songs had made him their hero:

" _Oh, Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant_

 _Who was very rarely stable;_

 _Hiedigger, Hiedigger was a boozy beggar_

 _Who could drink you under the table . . ._ "

River just shook her head. "Much as I hate to disrupt your philosophy seminar, Doctor, we'll be making planetfall in about an hour, and I want everyone to watch as Jenkins goes over the space suits one more time."

" _David Hume could out-consume . ._. Oh, of course River. Sorry, all, it'll have to wait."

The undergrads laughed an mock-grumbled.

"Oh, and Sweetie," added River, "have you had anything to eat yet today?"

"Um, let's see, I had a cuppa tea. With sugar."

"That's not eating."

"I can live on tea and biscuits for days," the Doctor protested. "Do it all the time."

"Not as part of my team you won't," protested River, rummaging through a storage locker. "Here, these curried lentils aren't too bad, even if they do look like something a cat left on the rug." She tossed the Doctor a plastic container of food.

He wrinkled his nose. "If you're trying to encourage my appetite, you aren't doing a very good job." A couple of the undergraduates laughed.

"The lentils are OK, Doctor," said Summer Leiberman, a dark-skinned girl who, like Jenkins, was a vegetarian. "It's the creamed spinach you have to look out for."

"Why? Does it have violent tendencies?" the Doctor asked.

They were all still laughing as the rest of the team filed into the crew lounge, Jenkins wearing a baggy white space suit.

"Good afternoon, everyone!" he said cheerfully. "Professor Song has asked me, as technical specialist, to go over the use of atmospheric survival suits again . . ."

River had been wearing a space suit on digs since she was nine; her parents had also been zeno-archaeologists. She tuned Jenkins out and focused on the Doctor, who was sitting with his lentils still unopened in his lap. She caught his eye and mimed eating. He frowned. She shook her head. _He is impossible!_ she thought. _Am I his lover or his mother?_

With an exaggerated sigh, the Doctor opened the lentils and dipped in a finger for an experimental taste. _They must be better than they look_ , thought River, as the Doctor continued eating. Po Chang, sitting next to the Doctor, stifled a snicker. Juan Gonzales looked to see what Po thought was so funny and snorted. River realized that the undergraduates would never remember what Jenkins was saying about "adjustable mesh density" so long as they were watching the Doctor shovel lentils into his mouth with his fingers. She caught his eye again and mouthed _SPOON!_ He gave her one of his little startled looks, and then rummaged with the container until he found the spoon that had been tucked alongside the meal.

River turned her attention back to Jenkins, who was demonstrating how to insure that the helmet of one's space suit was correctly locked into place. Summer, sitting behind her, tugged her sleeve. She turned around. Summer pointed at the Doctor, who was proudly holding up a clean plate for River's inspection. She resisted the urge to find something to throw at him, smiled, and turned back to Jenkins, who was discussing the suits' com systems.

"Because of the high levels of background radiation on Ghehenna," said Jenkins, "the telepathic projection circuits, or 'thought mail,' as it is most commonly called, will not be functioning, and voice transmissions will only carry a few yards. For this reason, it is absolutely imperative that each of us remain in visual contact with the rest of the dig team at all times . . ."

Summer tugged on River's sleeve again and then handed her a scrap of paper. On it the Doctor had written: _your cabin or mine?_

River looked over at him. He gave her a sly grin and loosened his necktie. She rolled her eyes and turned away.

"As we have been told," said Jenkins, "the winds on Ghehenna begin at sunset and increase in intensity as the night progresses. At their full speed, these winds pick up enough dust, sand, and debris to cut one of these suits to ribbons in minutes, even at maximum density. Therefore, we will begin securing the site each evening 90 minutes before sundown, and return to the ship 30 minutes before dark."

Summer handed River another scrap of paper. It said: _Jenkins will be in the hold, mucking about with the suits. Your cabin or mine? Not like we'll have a chance on the dig._

 _He's right about that,_ River thought. She looked at the Doctor. He was unbuttoning his jacket. She just sighed. I _must be out of my mind . . ._

At the end of Jenkins' lecture, he met her in the hatchway of the lounge and slipped an arm around her waist.

"You do know we'll be coming out of warp in about 20 minutes," said River softly. "We should be strapped in for landing. It could get bumpy when we decelerate from warp . . ."

"Yes, and if we time things just right . . ." the Doctor whispered in her ear.

"You are incredible!"

"That's what I've been told."

"Hey, Jenkins, have you seen the Professor and Doctor Sweetie?" asked Sally, using the name most of the team used for the Doctor when neither he nor Professor Song were around.

Jenkins, who was already strapped into his acceleration chair, said "I think they are in our cabin, trying to disprove a law of physics."

"Which one?" asked Sally, fastening her own restraints.

"The one which states that two bodies can not occupy the same point in space time simultaneously."

Sally laughed. "Aren't they adorable?"

"Adorable?"

"The way they're so in love. It's so romantic. They can't keep their hands off each other! The other day, I was looking for the Professor, to ask her about some of my gear, and I couldn't find her anywhere. I went down into the hold. Didn't see or hear anyone there, but, just on a whim, I went up and knocked on the Doctor's cabinet."

"What happened?" asked Jenkins.

"Nothing at first, but when I turned to go back to the main deck, the door of the cabinet opened, just a crack, and there was Doctor Sweetie, with no shirt on, putting his head out and saying, 'Hold on, we'll be out in a jiffy, luv!' Can you believe it? In the equipment cabinet!"

"I think you should be staying away from the Doctor's cabinet," said Jenkins seriously.

"Yeah, I probably should. But I still think they're a sweet couple. You think they'll get married?"

"I am not certain that the Doctor is the marrying sort. But if they do, do you suppose they would appreciate a copy of the _Kama Sutra_ as a gift?"

Sally laughed. "I suspect they already know everything in it!"

Jenkins thought for a moment. "I would not be surprised if the Doctor had written it," he said, almost to himself.

Before Sally could ask him what he meant, the voice of Sideshow Bob came over the ship's com system: _Ladies, Gentlemen, Undergrads, we are now dropping out of warp._

Just before the _Lupine_ began her descent to the planet Ghehenna, River and the Doctor arrived on deck and made their way to their seats to strap in. River did not look behind her. She suspected the Doctor was exchanging high-fives with Juan and Po, and she really didn't want to see that. _What was I thinking_ , she wondered, _to bring a lover on a dig?_

She fastened her restraints and looked out the window. Ghehenna appeared just as she remembered it: a dusty yellow ball, streaked with sluggish brown. Staring at the lifeless world beneath her, she thought, _Of course, I couldn't have kept the Doctor away from here if I'd tried! He's got more right to be here than any of us. By law, we should be petitioning him for permission to dig . . ._

She looked at him. He wasn't looking out the window, or at her. Instead he kept his eyes, dark and somber, on his hands, which he had folded in his lap.

"What's wrong, Sweetie?" she asked, and immediately felt stupid for asking.

He sighed. "It's Ghehenna. I haven't been here since . . . So much has changed. I've changed. Everything has changed . . ."

 _Great Goddess, he must have actually served here!_ "I . . . Doctor, you don't have to go out with us, if you don't want to . . ."

"No. I have to. It's why I came."

"To keep tabs on us? If you don't want us to dig, I'll cancel the mission, right now . . ."

"No, no," he said. His face seemed somehow older to River, worn and gray. "I'm just, just tired. Tired of running. Tired of carrying all this alone . . ."

River was suddenly reminded of an old exobiologist friend of her father's, Fred McMurty. He had returned to the University from an expedition to a dying planet circling a red star with one specimen: a bird. McMurty had claimed it was the only one left of its kind. It was male, with beautiful plumage and an exquisite mating song. McMurty had kept it as a pet in a cage in his office. At first it had seemed content enough, and its song had charmed the entire faculty. But as time passed, something had changed. The song lost its inventiveness, became strained, repetitive. The bird stopped sleeping, stopped eating, finally spending its last days in repeating the same call over and over, until one morning McMurty had come in to find the creature lying dead on the floor of its cage. Professor McMurty had speculated the bird had died of a metabolic imbalance, that he had overlooked something crucial when composing its food.

River Song had known better. He had died of loneliness.

Fighting back a tear, she silently placed her hand on the Doctor's and squeezed. He squeezed back. They held hands until the _Lupine_ had landed.

"Professor Song?" called Po from the back of the cabin. "Does anything live on Ghehenna?"

"No, Po, not even viruses. It's a completely sterile world. Why do you ask?"

"I thought I saw something moving out there."

"What?" said River and the Doctor simultaneously. The unstrapped their restraints and walked back to where Po was sitting.

"I was looking out the window as we set down," said the dark-haired young man, "And I thought I saw, I don't know, movement on the ground. Like rolling rocks or something."

"Dust devils," assessed River. "The ground's covered with anywhere from a third to a full meter of fine dust. We kicked it up as we landed."

"Oh. Sorry Professor," said Po. "Didn't mean to bother you."

"You didn't bother me. Remember what I said about stupid questions?"

Po grinned. "Only the ones we don't ask."

River turned back to the Doctor, who was standing with an odd, far-away look on his face.

"What's the matter, Doctor?" she asked.

"Oh, I was just thinking of something I once read:

 _In his house at R'lyeh dead, Cthulhu waits dreaming . . ._ "

Half an hour later, the entire team was assembled before the airlock. "All right," announced River over the com circuit of her spacesuit, "Sundown is in three hours, which will give us only enough time today to walk to the site, give it a general inspection, and return to the ship for decontamination. Question, Juan?" she said to one of the undergrads who was waving a white-gloved hand at her.

"Why did we land so far from the site?"

"To keep from disturbing it. It's an impact crater, set in the center of what was once a city. To land near it, we'd have to land in it. So we set the ship down outside the city and walk through. Once we figure out a safe route, we'll be able to use the Rover and cut our travel time. Summer?" she asked another waving hand.

"What do you mean, a safe route?"

"A route through the ruins that is wide enough for the Rover to pass through and stable enough not to collapse under it. Parts of this city were underground, and the old tunnels are likely to collapse without warning. A fellow on the last dig disobeyed my instructions, wandered into the city, fell through a skylight covered by dust, and broke his ankle, arm, and three ribs. Spent the rest of the dig in the medical bay. Lucky he didn't tear his suit, or he'd've been dead before we found him. So stay with the group! Any more questions?"

The Doctor, standing to the rear of the decontamination area with his helmet tucked beneath his arm, waggled his fingers.

"Yes, Doctor?"

"I was thinking," he began.

 _Always dangerous_ , thought River.

"Did you, perhaps, bring the disk-shaped artifact with you from your lab? The one you thought might be a key?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact I did. Are you suggesting I should bring it out to the site?"

"Well, if it's a key, we might find something it unlocks."

"Good thinking. Don't feel like going back for it right now, but tomorrow, before we go out to start gridding, I'll make certain I have it with me. All right, everyone, helmets on and locked. I'm about to open the airlock."

The outer lock opened to a rush of wind-borne dust. The team exited two by two, all of them hushed by the spectacle rising before them: the skeleton of a once-mighty city, shattered towers and twisted bridges jutting from the pale sand of the ground to the equally bleak sky. The same yellow-gray tint colored the entire landscape, from the dust rising around their feet to the clouds roiling overhead. River glanced back, picking the Doctor from the undergraduates clustered around him by his height. She could make out his face behind the visor of his helmet. His lips were set and his eyes hard. _This has got to be killing him_ , she thought, _but I'll be damned if I make it worse by saying anything to him._ She hit the com button on her cuff and said, "Folks, I suggest we put at least a partial tint on our visors–the radiation's no better for our eyes than the rest of us."

"Not too dark," came the Doctor's voice, transmitted from the rear of the crowd. Everyone turned to look at him. "Ah, I just like being able to see everyone's faces."

A few of the undergrads chuckled, but it was a dry, graveyard sound.

"Sun isn't getting any higher," said River. "Let's go."

She and RayQuan led the party into the silent, dust-shrouded streets of the wrecked city. A few soft beeps from behind her let River know that some of the party were engaging in private conversation. _Let 'em talk_ , she figured. _This place would give anyone the creeps. Don't want anyone having a panic attack on me._

Someone came up behind her and touched her elbow. Hoping it was the Doctor, River turned, and was dissappointed to see the lumpish form of Bob from the History department, digicam in hand.

"Any words on this historic occasion, Professor Song?" he asked, thrusting the camera into her visor.

"Yes. Get that thing out of my face and watch where you're going, before you break your neck." She indicated a sheer drop-off into a pit of twisted metal only a few feet away.

Bob backed off.

The beeps behind River increased in frequency. _He must be lecturing_ , she thought. She hit her com button again. "Hey, if that's such an interesting conversation back there, mind sharing with the rest of us?" she asked.

"Sorry Professor," replied Sally's voice. "The Doctor asked me and Jenkins about the last dig, and we were telling him about it."

"Eeek!" a young woman suddenly cried, her voice echoing over the open com.

"Who was that?" asked River, halting and turning.

"Oh, that was me," said Megan apologetically. "I stopped to look into a doorway, and there was a Dalek looking back at me! Well, parts of one, anyway."

The Doctor spoke before River did. "Don't lag behind," he said. "And don't wander off. This place is far too dangerous."

"The Doctor's right," said River. "I can not stress enough . . . Bob? Professor Reynolds?"

The historian was clambering over a pile of rubble and Dalek parts. "Professor Reynolds, turn on your com-system and come here right now!"

RayQuan went after the errant academic and tapped his shoulder, then indicated the switch for his com.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Bob. "Didn't know I'd switched it off. Professor Song, I thought I saw movement, there along the exposed section of that building there. Where the interior is open to the air. I was trying to film it."

"You'll see a lot of movement, particularly this time of day, as the winds start to pick up. Dust and debris, nothing more," said River. "This planet's deader than a maths major's love life."

After an hour of picking through the rubble of the old city, the party arrived at the edge of the chosen dig site: a huge, bare, empty crater in the midst of the ruins. A shorter, broader spacesuited figure approached River, brandishing a scanner. "Professor," said Jenkins, "the tachyon readings are consistent with the last dig."

"Not a fluke, then," she said. "Not that we thought they would be." She turned to face the party. "Well, here it is, people. Our own little piece of hell."

There was no sign left of the previous excavation; the winds of Ghehenna had erased all traces of Professor Song's previous expedition. The team spent a rather discouraging hour shuffling through the meter-thick dust of the site, River occasionally pausing to show a larger piece of the unusual glass fragments of the debris field to the others. The Doctor was uncharacteristically silent, a fact that River couldn't help but notice. No one protested when she declared it was time to return to the _Lupine_ , and they all trooped back through the dead city in a somber mood.

Once on board, the team was required to sit in the decontamination area for three quarters of an hour, until the automatic systems had purged the outsides of their suits of residual radiation. The undergrads had begun chattering brightly as soon as the airlock had closed, full of enthusiasm for the work they'd begin the next morning and speculating on the possible artifacts they might discover. Soon, everyone but the Doctor and River had joined the conversation. He was sitting across from her, and she smiled, softly, when she caught his eyes. He gave her a rueful half-grin in return.

"Bowling shoes," he suddenly interjected into the conversation.

"I beg your pardon?" asked Kitty Kincaide, who had been expressing a hope to find the remains of the craft's medical bay.

"Why not bowling shoes?" asked the Doctor. "They were time travelers, intergalactic tourists. No telling what kind of stuff they picked up: cheap novels, or pink plastic flamingos, or those flimsy rain-apron things with a place's name on them they sell you when you've forgotten your umbrella."

The conversation immediately shifted to a contest to see who could come up with the most improbable thing one might find inside a time machine. Luckilly the decontam cycle was over by the time things had degenerated enough for Po to suggest "Ghengis Khan's sweaty jock strap."

The next morning, River brought the medallion, as she'd come to think of it, to the crew lounge for the morning briefing. As the rest of the party finished their breakfasts, she went over the agenda for the day: using the Rover, they'd return to the site and begin mapping a grid to guide the excavation. Once she'd finished, she pulled the medallion from the pocket of her coveralls.

"Doctor, you asked for me to bring this along," River said. "Do you have an idea as to what we're going to do with it?"

"Ah, Professor," he said, setting down a cup of tea, "if you wouldn't mind handing it over to me. Just for a moment."

"Not at all." She gave the disk to RayQuan, who passed it to Po, who handed it to the Doctor, who flipped it over in his hands and pulled out his glasses.

"Now, I have a computer, in my, er, cabinet," the Doctor began, peering at the back of the disk, "which is dedicated to brute-force language translation. According to my work, the lettering here on the back of this object identifies it as 'the Great Seal of Rassilon' . . ."

"What's a rassilon?" asked Megan.

"I hope that's what we're here to find out," said River quickly, hoping to spare the Doctor an awkward moment. Part of her still wished he'd just go on and tell her and her people everything, let her go over his TARDIS bit by bit and then put it on display for the whole galaxy to see, but she respected his privacy. She suspected, too, that he respected her intelligence enough to want her to draw her own conclusions from her own work, and not have it spoon-fed to her. And after all, where was the fun if the mysteries were all solved?

The Doctor had taken a small device, a little larger than a pen, from one of his pockets and was pointing it at the seal disk.

"What're you doing?" River asked, hoping he wasn't going to damage her artifact, even if he did have more claim to it than she did. "What's that thing you've got?"

"It's a multiphasic oscillating vibrational probe," he said, "although I prefer to call it my sonic screwdriver."

"Your sonic screwdriver," she repeated. _Sounds like a mixed drink,_ she thought. _Or something rude . . ._

Juan, Po, and Jenkins stifled snickers. Obviously, they thought it was rude, too.

"If I can find the right frequency," said the Doctor, "I might be able to . . ." Suddenly the seal in his hands began emitting faint but regular pulses of light. "Switch it on," he finished. He passed it back up the table to River, who took it with an emotion akin to reverence.

"If it's active," the Doctor continued, "then any other intact systems buried at the dig site may react to it, and begin giving off signals of their own. Make it easier for us to find . . ."

He paused in mid-sentence as a faint gonging sound reverberated up through the deckplates beneath their feet. "Uh-oh," he said.

"What's that?" asked River.

"Er, some of the equipment in my cabinet must be responding to the signal that thing's giving off. Let me just go switch it off . . ." He left the lounge. As he passed her, River heard him mutter "day late and a Dalek short . . ."

She sent the rest of the team to suit up while she waited for the Doctor to return. When he did, she asked, "Not that I want to pry, but what just happened and is it dangerous?"

"Oh, no, no, that was just the Cloister Bell. A glorified panic button. Seems the Seal was set to give off a distress signal. The TARDIS was trying to tell me to respond, and I had to go down and tell her that we're rather too late to help."

 _He's talking about that ship like it's alive . . ._ River thought, frowning.

"She is alive, you know," said the Doctor.

"Wha . . . Can you read my mind?" asked River.

"No, of course not, well, not without your consent, anyway," said the Doctor. "No, I just saw the look on your face, the look that said 'poor old bastard's gone potty, he's talking to a machine.' But she is alive, and intelligent, if not much of a conversationalist. Her consciousness is, um, how to put this, not like ours. We exist in the moment. She, well, she's aware of the moment, but she's more . . . Everywhere. All the time. Non-linear. Does that make any sense?"

"For the mind of a time machine, I suppose so. Do you think it's at all possible we'll find anything left of the, um, consciousness of this craft?"

"No. Not after an explosion big enough to leave that crater. And even if the ship were intact, it wouldn't survive without a crew, not for a thousand years. We're linked, you see. It's a symbiotic relationship, involving genetic engineering on both sides, our brains and the craft. We designed the ships, you see, but we also re-designed ourselves to work with them."

"That . . . that is the most amazing thing I've ever heard," said River. She gave the Doctor a wry look. "And we won't find anything out there to prove it."

"We might. We might find some intact data nodes, although . . ." He paused. "I might not be able to let you have the information. We had very strict laws about allowing other species access to our technology, and although I'm the only one left to enforce them, old habits die hard . . ."

"As far as I'm concerned, Doctor," said River, "this is a burial site and you are next-of-kin. You have absolute, final say as to what is done with anything we find here."

"What would the rest of the team say? If they disagreed with me?"

"I hope it won't come to that, but I am in charge here. And Jenkins will certainly back us up." She smiled. "Guess those LINDA people might be good for something after all."

The dig surpassed River's expectations. She'd hoped they'd find something intact, anything that might shed light on the craft that had crashed there and its mysterious occupants. What they found, buried beneath the dust and sand, was everything from huge pieces of the ship itself to the personal property of the crew. They found clothing, jewelry, a book of Andromedan nature haiku ("the Poetry Book of Rassilon"), a food synthesizer ("the Coffee Maker of Rassilon"), and furnishings from the crew quarters ("the Incredibly Ugly Lava Lamp of Rassilon"). They found no physical remains, but they did unearth a medical database that sent Kitty Kincaide into absolute fits of alternating excitement and curiosity ("It's official! They were humanoid! But there appears to be nothing in here on reproduction. What does that mean?") Every day brought a new discovery, and the excitement of the team members was infectious and irresistible.

Almost. River couldn't help but notice, as the weeks passed, how the Doctor seemed to shrink and fade, withdrawing into his own thoughts, avoiding everyone's company, even hers. He worked as hard as ever, translated anything brought to him, and offered helpful suggestions ("It's highly unlikely, Kitty, that this anatomy evolved naturally. The Time Lords were probably genetically engineered, and reproduced through some form of cloning.") when asked, but still seemed distant and distracted. His smiles, which grew fewer and farther between, never reached his eyes. He stopped eating–he would open a meal, stir it with a utensil, and then pass it to Po or Jenkins when he thought River wasn't watching. She doubted he was sleeping.

Then they found the Black Box.

In fact, it was neither black nor box-shaped, but it was giving off a signal, in exact resonance with the Great Seal, and Jenkins speculated it might be some form of communications device. The brought it through the decontam cycle that evening and carried it up to the crew lounge, where Jenkins thought he might be able to hook it in with the _Lupine_ 's communication systems.

"Hey, everyone, back already?" asked Kitty, who'd stayed aboard the ship that day with the medical database and a translation matrix the Doctor had provided her.

"We've found what we think is part of their com system," said River. "We came back to see if we could extract anything from it."

Jenkins, Po, and RayQuan began fiddling with the device while the rest of the dig team watched and Bob from History videorecorded their work.

"Well, I've spent all day on the database," said Kitty, "and I think I may have learned why we aren't finding any bodies. They seem to have developed the ability, when seriously injured, to send themselves into a state of sub-cellular flux. They literally rebuilt their bodies, from the DNA up. They called it "regenerating." But if something went wrong, if the process were arrested and they died, then . . ."

"They dissolved into puddles of goo," said the Doctor darkly.

"Uh, well, I wouldn't have put it quite like that," said Kitty.

"But it's exactly what happened," said the Doctor. "When their ship exploded and they were trapped in the wreckage, their regenerations would have failed, and their bodies would have broken down into pools of organic residue, which then dried up into dust. When you wonder why we keep finding empty garments lying beneath the rubble as if someone had been wearing them, well, the answer is blowin' in the wind."

"You mean the dust we keep shaking out of the clothes we find is _corpses_?" asked Summer, aghast. "That's, that's . . . Ewww!"

"Ms. Leiberman," said River, "if you can not maintain your composure, not to speak of a respectful attitude, you have no business in the field of archaeology." She turned to the Doctor. "Given this theory, which I do find logical, should we perhaps return the clothing to the site? Or abandon the dig? There seems to be no way we can continue without desecrating these people's remains."

"I don't see any reason to stop," said the Doctor, eyes lost in the distant expression River was coming to know well. "We have no evidence these people held the remains of their dead in any particular reverence . . ." He paused, looked down at what Jenkins was doing, and then shoved the young man out of the way. "Here, let me . . ." The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and began fiddling with the settings, pointing it at different parts of the artifact. Suddenly, the com-screen at the side of the room lit up, and a dead woman began speaking in a long-dead tongue.

Her face was pale, grim, and resolute, suffused with an icy dignity, in spite of the sooty smudges on her cheek and the tendrils of dark hair slipping from the elaborate chignon she wore. Very little could be seen of the chamber she stood in, as it was obscured by her high white-and-gold collar. All that was visible consisted of a curved wall covered with a series of round glass roundels, and smoke, and flickering flames.

River turned to the Doctor. He stood frozen, staring at the screen with the most miserable expression she'd ever seen him wear. No one else noticed. They were all mesmerized by the woman, alternately speaking and then pausing as if listening to a reply.

" _Sagacity_ . . ." she heard the Doctor murmur under his breath, with a little wan ghost of a smile.

"Doctor," River said gently, "could you, possibly, translate what she's saying?"

He nodded. "She is speaking to, to a subordinate, in another ship. She's ordering him to return to Gallifrey for reinforcements. What he said is not recorded, but he obviously tried to argue with her, probably saying that, on account of her rank, she should go and he should stay."

Sparks flashed behind the woman's collar, and faint voices were heard shouting in the room around her.

"She refuses to save herself," continues the Doctor. "She says she's only a bureaucrat, and, and, whomever she is speaking to, is a warrior, and more valuable on account of his experience."

The woman on the screen paused again, as River realized, _Great Goddess, she was talking to HIM!_

The pale woman began speaking again, and the Doctor translated: "She says this is more important than her life, than his life, than any of them. The Daleks must be stopped at any price. Go to the Forbidden Zone, to the Tomb of Rassilon, and wake him. He will know how to defeat them . . ."

The broadcast ended in a burst of sparks and static.

"Did she really say 'the tomb of Rassilon,' Doc?" asked Juan, "or are you just messing with us?"

"I do not think the Doctor would be 'messing with us' about such a serious matter," said Jenkins somewhat huffily. River smiled wryly at him.

"Are you sure you translated correctly?" Summer asked. "I mean, did she really tell somebody to go wake up someone dead?"

"Well, _tomb_ could be translated as _resting place_ , I suppose," said the Doctor.

"I'm finding a lot of references to Rassilon in the medical database," said Kitty. "I think he was an actual historical figure . . ."

"What, like King Arthur, who sleeps until England's darkest hour?" suggested Megan.

" _Only with a significantly more effective stasis system_ ," River heard the Doctor mutter under his breath.

"Or it could be that 'Rassilon' is a common name in their culture, like 'Mohammed' in Islamic cultures, or 'Jesus' in Hispanic ones," suggested Bob from History.

As the rest of the team debated and discussed their latest discovery, River watched the Doctor quietly slip out of the lounge. He didn't come back for supper.

"You know," said Sally to River that night in their cabin, "I'm really starting to worry about the Doctor."

 _So am I_ , River thought, but said nothing.

"I don't think I've seen him eat anything more than a piece of toast in the last 3 days," Sally went on, "and Jenkins said he hasn't shown up for their role-playing game for almost a week."

"Role-playing?" River asked. "Is that what they've been doing in the lounge every night?"

"Yeah, something nerdy with little dice and maps. Apparently, the Doctor was playing the party cleric, and now Po's upset because no one else can cast healing spells and his character got beat up by goblins."

"Undergrads," River sighed.

"Well, Jenkins thinks Po needs to get his priorities straight, because something isn't right with the Doctor. We can't remember the last time we heard him singing a bawdy song. You don't think he's being affected by the radiation, do you? Maybe Kitty should check him out."

 _Oh, she'd love that,_ River thought. _With a scanner in one hand, and the half-translated database in the other . . . "_ I don't think so," said River. "I think he's just depressed. This planet will do that to anyone."

"Yeah, that's what Jenkins thinks. I said we should talk to him, but Jenkins said we should respect his privacy . . ."

 _Goddess bless Jenkins!_

"Speaking of privacy, you know Summer was bunking in with Megan, but Megan, she can't get to sleep without doing her calisthenics and listening to music every night, andSummer decided she couldn't deal with it any more, so she's started sleeping in the med bay, with Kitty."

River managed to follow this torrent of student-life drama and wondered why Sally was telling it to her.

"Well, I was thinking, I don't mind Megan's music at all, in fact, I kind of like it, so I asked Megan if maybe I could bunk in with her, and she said sure, so I can go over there right now if you like. I mean, if you'd like to have this room to yourself. And, um, the Doctor. Since he seems so unhappy."

 _Aha. The girls are matchmaking_. _How sweet._ River smiled at Sally. "Thank you. All of you."

Sally picked up her pajamas in one hand and her toiletry bag in another. "I'll just be going, then, Professor. See you in the morning."

After Sally left, River decided it might not be such a bad idea to go looking for the Doctor. If he were holed up somewhere in the TARDIS, of course, she'd never find him, nor would she intrude upon him by looking, but it wouldn't hurt to check the common areas of the _Lupine_.

She found him sitting with the lights out on the observation deck above the lounge, folded into the corner of a window seat, listening to the poison rain lash against the ship.

"You weren't at dinner," she said softly. "Can I get you something to eat?"

"I'm not hungry," he said, still staring out into the dark.

"How about a cuppa tea then?"

He sighed. "Tea. Yes. I'll have a cup."

"With sugar?"

"Yes, please."

River went back to the lounge, made two cups of tea, and carried them back to the observation deck. Handing one cup to the Doctor, she kept the other and sat down at the far end of the window seat to drink it.

"I'm not going to ask you if you want company," she said, "because even if you don't want it, I think you need it. I don't believe it's healthy for you to be alone so much."

"What makes you think that?" he asked, not looking at her.

"I'm an archaeologist. I'm trained to make deductions about life forms by their artifacts. I've seen inside your ship. It's huge. There's no way that was designed to be used by a single individual. And that control console? Unless you're prepared to run laps around it, there's no way anyone could operate that craft alone. Your ship had to have a crew, probably a large one. That indicates to me that your species evolved as social creatures, the same as humans did. I think you're lonely."

A faint smile touched the Doctor's lips. "You know, I've had people in and out of that TARDIS for centuries, and you're the first one to ever notice that she's a bit much for me to handle on my own."

"Really?"

"Yes. Everyone else just assumed that she gave me problems because she was old and decrepit, or because, for a Time Lord, I'm a bit thick." He shook his head and sipped his tea.

River sipped hers but said nothing. They sat for a while without either one speaking, listening to the wind and rain howling outside.

At last River said, "You know, if I close my eyes and just listen, I can almost believe I'm back at my Granny's place, where I grew up on New, New South Wales, sitting up in my bed on a stormy night. Just the perfect time to curl up with a copy of _The Hound of the Baskervilles,_ or perhaps the memoirs of Amelia Peabody."

"Or one of the Harry Potter series," said the Doctor. " _Prisoner of Azkaban_ was my favorite."

"You like reading in bed in the rain, too?" asked River.

"Oh, yes. We'd have some fabulous storms come roaring up out of the wilderness on Gallifrey. They'd wash over the dome of the Citadel as if they were trying to wipe us off the planet. Most folks tried to ignore them, but I always tried to find myself a spot where I could see and hear a good storm."

River sipped her tea in silence, waiting for the Doctor to continue if he chose.

"The irony of it all," he said softly, almost to himself, "the terrible, terrible irony, is that for the most part I hated that damned planet, and spent as little time there as possible."

River bit her lip to keep from asking "Why?" _If he wants me to know, he'll tell me,_ she thought.

The Doctor sat for a few minutes with his head sunk on his knees. "You know all those clothes we've been finding? All those layers? We wore them partly for warmth, it's true, because when we remade ourselves, we made ourselves cold, corpse-cold, really. But we also wore them to muffle and conceal our bodies, to hide away our flesh, to deny any thought that the shells we inhabited were anything more than life support for our brains. It was like, like living in a monastery, I suppose, with all the discipline and denial. Except that there was no spiritual enlightenment, no religious ecstasy, to compensate for what we'd given up, nothing but dust, and boredom, and a simpering, smirking voyeurism with which we observed the lesser species as they ate and mated and wallowed in the muck that we, in our infinite perfection, had raised ourselves above."

 _The most highly evolved race in the universe,_ River thought in shock, _and they were a pack of self-righteous stiffs?_

"Most Time Lords wore gloves at all times," the Doctor added. Unfolding his legs, he moved closer to River and reached out to touch her cheek. "Can you imagine, going through your life without ever touching another person?"

River took his hand. "I couldn't do it."

"Neither could I."

River half-closed her eyes, expecting the Doctor to kiss her, but he pulled away and kept talking. "The thing was, going off-world, experiencing life as other species lived it, I came to realize how similar we all really are. I mean, sure, I've got the metabolism of a reptile and your poor Kitty Kincaide probably couldn't find her way around my internal anatomy with both hands and a torch, but I laugh, I cry, I like to read when it's raining outside, just as a human does."

River couldn't keep herself from asking, "So you chose to live among humans?"

"And other species. I was curious. Always have been. And if it had just been a matter of satisfying my curiosity, the Time Lords wouldn't have bothered with me. I'd have been just another degenerate wastrel out getting drunk and slumming with the natives. But you see, I started to care. And then I committed the ultimate sin. I took sides. I got involved."

He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts. "You see, our powers had grown so great, most of us feared that to use them would end up destroying the entire fabric of space-time as we knew it. So we were forbidden to interfere with the unfolding of history, with the affairs of other species." He chuckled. "At least not openly. The High Council was hopelessly paranoid , always sneaking and poking and prodding, keeping other species from developing time travel, holding them back, keeping them down. All in secret, of course. I would interfere openly, so they made an example of me, stripped me of my rank and my name, took everything. I think I told you I stole my TARDIS from a repair bay . . ."

"You told me you took it . . ."

"Yes, well I stole it. Couldn't stand the thought of living trapped on Gallifrey forever. And of course the Time Lords didn't stop me, because I was now their most useful tool. Got a war cropping up, some kind of galactic menace, something too messy or dangerous for any other Time Lord to touch with a ten-meter pole? Just take remote control of the Doctor's TARDIS, land him in the middle of it, he's a clever boy, he'll sort it. And the rest of them would sit back and watch, and lay bets on whether I could manage it without burning through another regeneration cycle, or if I'd get up the nerve to tell any of the pretty human girls I traveled with how fond I was of them. And that was my life, for centuries. Until the War came."

The rain beat down on the hull of the _Lupine_ , and River found herself holing her breath, waiting to hear what the Doctor would say next.

"They'd been dreading it for ages, ever since I'd discovered the Daleks. Yes, I was the first Time Lord to encounter them, quite by accident–well, maybe not, maybe they sent me, if they did, they'd never tell–And of course the Daleks were anathema to me, worse even than the Time Lords in terms of having no lives to speak of. They were nothing but brains in a shell, incapable of love or pleasure or laughter or music or anything that makes life more than merely existing. So I fought them, wherever I found them, which was pretty much everywhere, because they got to be like roaches. For every one you saw, there were a hundred more you didn't. And of course, these roaches were nearly two meters high, armor plated, and out to exterminate _you_. They were genetically engineered to perceive every other life form, from the most advanced sentient life to the smallest microbe, as a potential evolutionary rival and therefore a threat to be wiped out. They got to be so pernicious, at one point the Council openly ordered me to travel back to their home world and destroy them at the moment of their creation."

"But you didn't do it."

"No. I couldn't. I felt if I did, if I wiped out an entire species simply because they were a potential threat, I would have become exactly like them."

"You were right."

"Was I?" The Doctor looked at River with huge, haunted eyes. "I could have stopped them, stopped the War from ever happening. The War that killed this planet and hundreds of others." He turned back to the window, as if staring back into the past a thousand years to the time Ghehenna had been a battleground. "She couldn't have lasted five minutes after that last transmission, you know," he said. "I followed her orders. I went back to Gallifrey. I woke Rassilon from his ten-million year sleep." The Doctor gave a little smile. "He was rather disappointed that we hadn't advanced at all since his time, that we'd just sat on our laurels and stagnated. But he led us, and gave us new gifts, powers like gods, things we'd never dreamed possible, and we fought the Daleks. But it wasn't enough. Nothing was enough. There were simply too many of them, they bred too quickly, built their shells and ships and war machines too quickly, and we were overrun, and they were battering at the very gates of the Citadel. The Eye of Harmony, the source of our power, the terminus of a black hole harnessed by Rassilon in ages past, was almost drained. Can you imagine draining a black hole? We cowered in the Council chambers and looked to Rassilon to save us again. And it was too late. The only hope, the last desperate throw, _Ultima Esperanza_ , was to drag them down into death with us, and allow the rest of the Universe a chance to survive. There was only one catch. The trap had to be sprung from the outside. Some one, solitary Time Lord had to stand apart and murder both our races, or the universe would be utterly lost. We all thought it should be Rassilon. He was father to us all, if he survived, he could re-build our race. But he said no. Our time was over. And the Daleks were crafty, and hard to kill. If only one survived, it could start the war anew, and then whichever of us remained would have to be able to fight on alone, without any aid or support. Guess who Rassilon chose, for that terrible, final honor, that wretched curse, to take the last of our fading power into himself and become immortal, the lonely hand of doom?"

River said nothing. She had no words with which to speak to a god.

"I had always hated Time Lords, hated them for their hypocrisy, for their coldness, for the dry, dusty monotony of their lives . . . But, but . . . I _never_ hated them enough to want to kill them . . ."

Impulsively, River threw her arms around the Doctor's shoulders. He buried his face in her hair, and she held him, saying nothing, as he wept.

"So, are you going to want breakfast this morning, or are the peanut butter sandwiches I made last night enough to hold you for a while?" asked River, addressing the tuft of dark hair poking from beneath the covers on her bunk.

"Mmm, I'm good . . ." mumbled the Doctor from under the covers.

River turned back to her vanity mirror and continued blow-drying her hair. "Well, you'd better get up and get dressed soon if you want to make it to the briefing on time."

"What's on the agenda for today," the Doctor asked, rolling over and stretching, exposing his face and one long, sinewy arm.

 _What is it that makes him so damned attractive?_ River wondered, looking at the Doctor's reflection in the mirror. _He's certainly not what you'd call "classically handsome," and he's so pale. Pale as a ghost. A poor, lost ghost, haunting that great old ship of his . . . Maybe that's it. He's just so lonely, so pitiful, you just can't resist taking him home . . ._

"River?" The Doctor sat up in bed. The blankets fell away from his chest, revealing taut muscles clinging to his lean frame. River stared at the reflection and hoped the blankets slipped a little more. _A time and a place, Professor Song, and this isn't it!_ she admonished herself. She forced herself to look away.

"What will we be doing today?" the Doctor asked.

 _Making love like wild things_ , she thought, but said, "going back to the dig site, same as always. Our time here is so limited, we've got to recover as much as we can before we have to go. I think I'm even going to ask Kitty to put that database down and come help us. Unless, of course, you object. You can pull the plug on this project any time you like. You know that, right?"

"Oh, I know, but I wouldn't dream of stopping this," he said. "My, my people deserve to be remembered. Madame President's last words should be heard. Even if it is painful to me to hear them."

"I'm, I'm really rather sorry to put you through this," River said. "I can't begin to imagine what this must be like . . ."

"Oh, don't worry about me," said the Doctor, perhaps a bit too easily, as he threw off the blankets and got out of bed. "I can't deny what happened, and it doesn't do me a bit of good to keep it all bottled up inside, eating at me." He began examining the clothes he'd left hanging over a chair the night before. "I suppose I'll have to put this suit back on. D'you think it's too wrinkled? Did I get any jelly on my tie?"

"If any jelly escaped you last night, it was lucky," said River, trying not to look at the unclothed man standing behind her. "I keep telling you, you should eat regular meals, not starve yourself for days and then swallow down a half-dozen sandwiches like a boa constrictor."

The Doctor chuckled as he got down on his hands and knees. "Did I really eat that many . . . Where are my shoes? Oh, there they are . . ."

River couldn't resist looking in the mirror as the Doctor fished his running shoes out from under the bunk. _Oh, what a lovely bum . . . Steady, girl . . ._ She closed her eyes, regretfully.

"Have I time for a shower?" asked the Doctor.

 _If I can keep my hands off you_ . . . "Of course, dear," said River, eyes still closed.

She began applying her makeup as the Doctor showered. She could hear him singing:

" _Well, I kissed a girl, and I liked it!_

 _The taste of her cherry Chap-Stick_. . ."

River giggled.

" _I kissed a girl, and I liked it!_

 _Hope the folks back home don't mind it!_

 _It felt so wrong,_

 _It felt so right_. . ."

"What is that rubbish you're singing?" River asked.

"Oh, sorry, didn't mean to bother you . . ."

"Doesn't bother me, I'm just glad to see you're in a better mood."

"Yes, it's amazing what a bellyfull of peanut buttter will do for one's outlook . . ." He came out of the shower cubicle, toweling his hair, just as River stood up to find her clothes. In the cramped cabin, they found themselves standing toe to toe.

They were late for the morning briefing.

"Good morning, sorry we're late," said River as she entered the lounge, trying to ignore any smirks, snickers or stares from the rest of the team. It wasn't easy, as the Doctor had come in just before her and was exchanging truly sophmoric grins with the undergrads.

"The Doctor and I were up late discussing the significance of yesterday's find." Po snorted audibly, and the females on the team were all simpering. River soldiered on. "I think it's safe to say that what we've discovered here pretty much blows the lid off any other work done on the Great Time War to this date. We've brought the Time Lords out of the realm of fiction into fact. But we can not let the academic importance of what we've done here . . . Excuse me?"

The Doctor had put his feet up on the conference table. "Oops, sorry, my bad," he said, lowering his sneakers to the ground.

 _He's utterly incredible_ , River thought, reflecting on how in less than 12 hours he'd gone from sobbing like a child in her arms to horsing with the undergrads as if he were one of them. She doubted the peanut butter was responsible. Nor was she self-important enough to take the credit herself. It was more likely that the Doctor had made a very effective habit of keeping his emotions "bottled up," as he'd put it. _Has to take the cork out and let off pressure every so often, so to speak, and the rest of the time he keeps it shut up and out of his mind_ , she figured. It made sense–if he had to live every day with as much raw pain as she'd witnessed the night before, he wouldn't be able to function. She had to give him credit. If she'd been elected to wipe out her own species and then live forever with the guilt, she doubted she'd do so well.

"Oh, by the way," she said, "Summer, we apologize, but we rather destroyed your private stash of peanut butter last night."

"That's all right," said summer as Juan and Po unsuccessfully tried to stifle sounds remarkably like giggles. _Oh, for crying out loud!_ thought River. _And if I was going to do that, I certainly wouldn't use peanut butter. Whipped cream, maybe . . ._ "The Doctor had worked through dinner," River continued by way of explanation, "and we decided to make sandwiches." She decided not to look at the faces the Doctor and the undergrads were making at each other.

"Now, as I was saying, we can't get distracted by thinking about how all this is going to look on our resumes and get sloppy. This planet is still one of the most dangerous environments human archaeologists have ever excavated in, and we've still got two weeks left to work. Let's make them count. And one more thing. Please. Remember the people whose property we're unearthing gave their lives for us. So. Respect. Caution. Let's get back to work."

"You know, no matter how many times I come this way, this place still gives me the creeps," said River. She was sitting next to the Doctor on the Rover as the team traveled to the dig site. "I always feel like I'm being watched."

The Doctor hit his com button and replied, "Yes, it's all those empty windows. Like a thousand baleful eyes, all staring at you."

"I'm actually beginning to look forward to the end of the dig," River continued. "I want to go home. And not just to the University. I think I may actually go home to my family's place, the one I was telling you about last night. You're invited, of course. You could meet my parents . . ."

"Meet your parents?" said the Doctor, with a faint tinge of alarm in his voice.

"Or not, if you're not ready to. But I think you'd like them. I think they'd like you. They're archaeologists too. We could tell them you're a wealthy amateur historian."

"You wouldn't want to tell them . . ."

"Not unless you want to . . ."

"Erm, Professor Song?" Juan Gonzales leaned towards them and hit his com button. "I hate to interrupt your private conversation, but I just remembered. Yesterday, I was working with one of our field spectrometers, and what with all the excitement over the Black Box . . ."

"Don't tell me," said River. "Let me guess. You left it at the dig site."

"Uh, yes, ma'am."

River sighed. "This has got to be the worst dig for losing equipment I've ever been on."

"But I know where I left it," said Juan.

"It's doubtful it made it through last night's storms," said River. "Even if it's where you left it, and hasn't been blown or washed away, the acid rain would fry out the circuitry. How many times do I have to tell you not to leave things at the dig site?"

"But I haven't left anything at the dig site before, Professor Song," Juan protested.

"What about that hydrospanner you lost three days ago?" she asked.

" It went missing in broad daylight. Somebody else picked it up. They didn't bring it back?"

"It hasn't turned up." River sighed in her helmet. "Great. Radiation, poison rain, and now gremlins."

"Gremlins?" Juan asked.

"Mythical Earth creatures, responsible for malfunctions, breakage, and other technical problems," said River. "I'm joking. I'll ask Sally about the hydrospanner. She probably took it and put it somewhere. She's got an amazing head for historical facts, but is terribly absentminded with the lab equipment."

The Doctor had remained oddly silent throughout this exchange. "Are things going missing? I mean from the dig site? I hadn't really noticed."

"Of course not, you've had your mind on other things," said River. "The translation matrix," she said to Juan, by way of explanation. "Stuff always goes missing on a dig. Tools, small electronics. This place just seems to swallow it up, though. Must be the sand. Drop stuff in, it'll take another excavation to find it."

"When we get back tonight," said the Doctor, "could you make me a list of exactly what's been lost? And who was working where last with it?"

"I'll have to do it anyway," said River, "just to let the University know. I can start tonight if you like. But why do you ask?"

"Oh, just, um, wondering, that's all . . ." The Rover trundled into the dig site and the conversation ended.

"Whoa . . ." Juan broadcast to the entire group. The storm of the night before had eroded away much of the loose sand in the crater, especially in the spots exposed by the team's work. Arched girders, chunks of rondel-studded walls, and tangled masses of wiring jutted out of the crater floor.

"Well, well, looks like this damned planet finally decided to cut us some slack," said River. "I just hope we haven't lost too many delicate artifacts. History Bob, I want you to film this _in situ_. RayQuan, you know the Rover better than I do–how big a piece can we haul back to the _Lupine_? After I send you back for the grav clamps. And if you approve," she added, turning to the Doctor.

"Why wouldn't I?" he said with a shrug. "It's your dig. I'm just the interpreter," he added, as the rest of the team gave him an odd look.

RayQuan, Po, and Megan went back to the _Lupine_ for the grav clamps while the rest of the team started in unearthing the closest girder.

"What are we going to do with this, Professor?" asked Sally. "I mean, it's obviously some kind of structural support, but it's huge . . ."

"We've got enough space in the _Lupine_ 's hold," said River, "I'd like to bring some of the structure back for the exhibition. Install it in the gallery, give people an idea of the aesthetic sense that went into this craft's design."

"But it's all in pieces," said Sally. "How would be possibly know how any of this fits together?"

"I am certain Professor Song will be able to make an educated guess," said Jenkins.

 _Indeed_ , thought River. _I'll just ask, "Hey sweetie, is this upside-down or right-side up?"_

The day was spent clearing large pieces of the downed craft and ferrying them back to the ship. They found very few small artifacts, probably because, as River had feared, the storm had washed them away. However, after the team had lifted away a piece of instrument panel, something shiny that had lain beneath it caught Summer's eye.

"Hey, what's that . . ." She bent to pick up a round, flat object of golden metal.

The Doctor turned to see what the girl had found. "What do you . . . Careful! Don't drop it! Don't open it! Give it to me!"

The rest of the team froze. River turned to the Doctor in surprise; she'd never seen him get that excited over anything else they'd found.

"Here," said Summer, handing the artifact to the Doctor, who immediately held it as close to his ear as his helmet would allow. He listened for a few moments, and then groaned.

"Never mind," he said. "It's dead. Broken. Been broken since the crash, most likely."

"Uh, may we ask what it is, Doctor?" asked Jenkins.

"It's, um, well, it was, a spring-wound analog chronometer," said the Doctor. He pressed a knob at the side of the object, and it popped open, sprinkling bits of broken glass and metal into the Doctor's gloved hands.

"Get a specimen box," exclaimed River. "We don't want to lose the pieces." She looked at the artifact. "So it's a pocket watch," she said. "My grandmother used to carry one. Only hers was silver, and just had her initials on it. This one's got some lovely engraving . . ." Sally handed River a plastic box, which she offered to the Doctor. "May I have it?" she asked softly. She could tell by his face he was fighting back his emotions again.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, it will look very nice in your exhibit."

River bit her lip. _Did he know the owner?_ she wondered. _Or is this thing more than it appears? Why would he say "It's dead" about a watch?_ She knew she would never ask him. "Bob, I want you to get some video of the exposed rubble here, before we start sifting. Bob?" she looked around the group. "RayQuan, where's History Bob?"

"He's over . . ." RayQuan turned to one side of the crater. "I don't know. He was over there, on that piece of rubble, trying to get a long shot of the rest of us prepping to lift that last piece into the Rover . . ."

River sighed in exasperation. "Bob, where are you?" she broadcast. There was no answer. "Brilliant," she said. "He's wandered out of range. RayQuan, Jenkins, go over there and give the idiot a yell while we start sifting."

The two graduate students picked their way over to the chunk of concrete Bob had been standing on. Jenkins turned and waved to River.

"Professss . . .Song . . .not find . . ." His transmission was barely audible. "But . . . tracks . . ." He pointed towards the ruined city.

River snorted in disgust. "That's it, no more damned tourists on my digs. Ever. Folks, We've got . . ." she looked at the chronometer on the wrist of her suit. "Three hours to get back to the ship. Bob can't have gone far. He's not built for speed. We'll go as a group to find him. I don't want anyone else getting separated." The team moved to join Jenkins and RayQuan, River in the lead and the Doctor close behind her. "Wasting three hours of my dig," she muttered to the Doctor. "When I find him, I'm going to kick his backside all the way back to the _Lupine_ , ground him, and give his camera to Megan!"

After ten minutes of following the historian's tracks through the ruined city, RayQuan spoke up: "What was that you said about History Bob not being built for speed, Professor?"

"Not the first time I've been wrong," River replied."What the hell does he think he's doing?"

The Doctor moved ahead of the group an held up a hand for them to stop. "I've noticed something . . . Look, here, around his tracks." He knelt down to get a closer look.

The rains had turned the coating of dust on the ground into a layer of sludge, in which History Bob's footprints could be seen between large chunks of rubble. River came closer and looked where the Doctor was pointing.

"What are we looking at?" she asked.

"The mud," the Doctor said. "Around the footprint. It isn't smooth. It's like something's been moving in it, like, oh, I don't know, worms or snakes or something."

River's eyes narrowed. "You think there's something alive here."

"You don't seem surprised," said the Doctor.

"First rule of alien dig sites: be prepared for anything, especially the impossible," she said. "Still, it would be hard to imagine something that could survive here, what with the toxins and radiation . . ."

Suddenly the Doctor leapt to his feet and began scrambling over the rubble, following Bob's tracks.

"Go back to the _Lupine_ , all of you!" he shouted. "I'll find Bob myself. . ."

"The hell you will!" answered River. "We are not splitting up!" She moved to follow him, and waved for the rest of the party to come after her. They all followed the Doctor.

"Who died and put him in charge?" asked Kitty as she got close enough to broadcast.

Before River could answer, the Doctor himself called back, "That Rassilon chap you've been reading about. Now go back to the _Lupine_!"

"Absolutely not!" said River. "We aren't leaving you! Everybody, keep up! And look sharp! We aren't alone here! RayQuan, the moment you can get a signal back to the ship, tell Sideshow to break out the toys . . ."

The Doctor pulled up at a darkened archway, partially obscured by rubble, leading down a narrow, curved stairway. "Oh, why, why, why are people so stupid? Why am I so stupid?"

"He went down there?" asked River, peering around the Doctor's shoulder. The rest of the party clustered around them.

"It's where all the tracks lead. His and whatever he was following," said the Doctor.

River pushed past him. "We'll have to go in single file . . ." She reached back and switched off the Doctor's com before he could protest. "You will not go down there alone," she insisted, trying not to smile at the sight of his lips moving furiously behind his visor. "And I'm going first. You're second, Doctor. Kitty, you're third. RayQuan, you stay on the surface, keep trying to raise Sideshow. The rest of you, follow us. Eye contact with the person ahead of you at all times. And be prepared to run like hell if I give the word."

The Doctor finally managed to switch his com back on. "River, I . . ."

"You aren't the only one who knows what may be at stake here," said River, as she disappeared down the stairway. "Don't think I haven't thought of this . . ."

The Doctor moved after her as quickly as the narrow stairs would allow. "River, this is no time to start showing off!"

"I'm not showing off," said River. "I'm being a competent team leader! And if your male ego can't handle that, then maybe you should find yourself another lover, some empty-headed teenage girl ready to hang on your every word. Try a shopping mall. They're full of them."

The Doctor sputtered, but made no coherent reply. Behind him, Kitty said sensibly, "Can we save the personal issues for after we've found Bob?"

"Watch your step," said River. "The stairs get slippery down here, there's something slimy all over the ground . . . O.K., I've gotten to the bottom, there's a passage . . . Oh, damn! Kitty, get over here!"

The staircase ended in a long-abandoned transport tube, a double set of tracks running through the middle of a wide tunnel. Lying in a white mound at the side of the tracks was the space-suited form of Bob Reynolds.

The Doctor pushed past River and, to her horror, unlocked and pulled off his gloves as he dropped to the ground next to Bob.

"What are you doing?" she cried. "Get those gloves back on . . ."

"Doctor, these tunnels are just as bad as the surface," added Kitty. "You're exposing yourself . . ."

"I can take a little," he said. "I've got to examine the body . . ." He began running his hands over the history professor's torso.

"We don't even know if he's dead!" began Kitty.

"Oh, he's dead all right," said the Doctor, beginning to unfasten the seals on Bob's suit. "And every system in his suit appears to be fried, in case you were hoping for him to tell us what killed him."

"Ugh," groaned River. "I hate ghost signals . . ."

"What's happening, Professor?" asked Jenkins, coming down the stairs.

"Don't come any closer, Jenkins," said River, "and tell the rest of the party to freeze. History Bob's down." She shook her head. "What am I going to tell his department? What am I going to tell his boyfriend?"

Kitty knelt next to the Doctor as he palpitated the body with his bare hands. "I don't see any marks," said Kitty.

"And you won't. But his internal organs are mush. He was hit with a coherent plasma burst . . ."

"Are you sure?" asked River, whipping around to face the Doctor.

"Absolutely. When you've seen as much of this as I have . . ." He pulled his gloves back on and locked them into place, then began fiddling with the dials on his suit. "And if the body wasn't proof enough, the stench is. Augh! Be glad you can't smell it . . ."

River turned back to Jenkins. "Can you help us get Bob up the stairs? I don't want to leave anything behind."

"Good idea," put in the Doctor, "but we've got to move quickly. They'll be back any moment."

"They?" asked Kitty. "Who's 'they'? What killed Bob? What's going on?"

"No time to talk, Kitty, we've got to get out of these tunnels," said the Doctor, lifting the historian's body under one arm. "Jenkins, would you mind . . ."

The grad student hurried forward and took the dead man's other arm.

"Bob's camera," the Doctor said. "Do you see it anywhere, River?"

"No," she said, sweeping the headlamp of her helmet around the tunnel.

"They likely took it. Haven't decided if they can use the body yet, but they'll probably come back for it. Jenkins, you got him? Good. Let's go."

"Would somebody please tell me what's just happened here?" said Kitty.

"We'll explain later," said River, as she pushed the medic towards the stairway.

Once the party was back above ground, River began barking orders. "All right, back to the _Lupine_ , fast as we can. RayQuan, Juan, take Bob's body," she said, gesturing for Jenkins and the Doctor to hand the corpse off to the brawniest members of the group. "We're getting out of here ASAP!" She gestured in the direction of the ship and then began jog-trotting through the wreckage. "Try and keep up, and don't let anyone lag behind!"

"Ohmigod!" exclaimed Megan, who had been at the end of the line into the tunnels and, like half of the party, out of com range, "Is Professor Reynolds dead? What happened?"

"Shut up and run, Megan," said River. The frightened undergrad complied. "Yes, I'm afraid he's dead. I've made a serious mistake coming here. This planet's not lifeless after all."

"But what could live here?" asked Kitty, as the party struggled throught the ruins. "The planet's utterly toxic . . ."

Before River could answer her, the Doctor responded. "This was my mistake, not yours, River."

"You think you should have told us not to come?" River replied. "But you didn't know any more than we did . . ."

"But I should have! I led the fleet back here! I coordinated the bombing. I thought there were no survivors. I thought we'd killed them all. I thought nothing could exist here! I'm an idiot, a senile, forgetful idiot . . ."

"With all due respect, Doctor," panted Po, jogging at the rear of the group, "what the hell are you taking about?"

"Daleks," said River. "Apparently, enough of them survived the bombardment to start breeding here."

"In all this radiation and toxic waste?" asked Summer.

"Mother's milk to them, probably," said the Doctor. "They were engineered to survive on a planet just like this, ravaged by a thousand years of war."

"But how do you know?" asked Po. "And what were you saying before, that you co-ordinated the bombing?"

"Wake up, Po," said River drily. "The Doctor's a Time Lord. He came here to oversee the excavation of his people's artifacts. Make sure we treated them with respect."

"He's a . . . But I thought . . ." said Po.

"Do you honestly think anyone would come all the way to Ghehenna just to sleep with me?" said River.

"Actually, I would," said the Doctor. "I mean, this isn't exactly my first choice for a romantic getaway, but . . . "

"Later, Sweetie," said River. "Save your breath for getting back to the _Lupine_."

"But shouldn't we go back to the Rover first?" asked Kitty. "I mean, we aren't going to leave it behind, are we?"

"Certainly not," said River, "at least not in any pieces big enough for the Daleks to salvage. But we're halfway to the _Lupine_ as it is, I figured we'd be better off if we got the guns before we went for the Rover."

"Guns?" repeated the Doctor, incredulous. "You brought weapons on an archaeological dig? Whatever for?"

"For Daleks," said River. "After that comment you made, the first time you saw Dilbert in our lab, about cellular residue and DNA strands, I started thinking. Just how much Dalek would have to survive to start the whole mess over again? Obviously, not much, from the look on your face. You figured there was a chance something had survived. So I decided we weren't coming in here unarmed. RayQuan and I tested a series of plasma rifles, until we found something that would blow a hole in Dalek poly-carbide at thirty meters. Sideshow Bob's breaking them out for us now."

"That might not be enough," said the Doctor, "if they've managed to get their personal energy sheilding on-line, you could blast at them all day and never touch them. Then again, it might actually be overkill. From all we've seen, I suspect that the locals are predominantly nudists."

"Are what?" asked Kitty.

"Nudists. Naked. Crawling around in the open air _sans_ casings. I mean, we've all caught movement out of the corners of our eyes, haven't we, but always something small, secretive, lurking just out of sight. Certainly not rolling around in two meters of glossy black armor. And those tracks Bob was following? They were tentacle marks. This place is a Dalek's paradise. They can actually come out of their shells and exist on the surface. They probably bask in the radiation, soaking it in through their skin. Look, up there . . ." He pointed to a building whose empty windows faced the light of the swiftly-setting sun. River gasped. At almost every opening, she could see pale, ropy tendrils of _something_ hanging out into the light. She would have thought them wiring, or dead vegetation . . . but some of them were twitching.

"They aren't even bothering to hide from us anymore," said the Doctor. "They're just watching. Waiting for their better-dressed bretheren to come up from wherever they've been skulking and finish us off. Then they'll take the _Lupine_. And start off conquering the universe again." The Doctor sighed. "They're so predictable."

"Keep moving!" barked River at several of the party who had stopped in their tracks to stare at the basking Daleks. "Our only chance is to get our guns before we meet an armed scout party. Hopefully, we won't find they've gotten to the _Lupine_ ahead of us."

Everyone stopped asking questions and ran.

Sideshow Bob, dressed for the first time in a full space suit, stood at the ramp of the _Lupine_ , surrounded by crates.

"All right, kids, this is what we've got," said River, pulling the lid off one crate. "Half of us will take guns. Hold it like so, two hands." She demonstrated. "Safety goes off like this, fires like this:" She let off a blast that vaporized a nearby pile of rubble. "Be careful, these things kick like a drunken Andromedan." She opened a slightly smaller crate. "The rest of us will take these." She lifted up an egg-shaped, metallic device. "These are explosive charges. We've got to go and set them around the site. Blow it up, so the Daleks can't salvage any Time Lord technology from it. Then, if we live so long, we high-tail it back here and take off. Sideshow, you stay here and get the engines warmed up. Jenkins, no offense, but I don't trust you with anything that goes boom, and besides, you're the slowest in the group. Stay and help Sideshow. RayQuan, Juan, please put Professor Reynold's body on a bench inside the airlock. Everyone, choose your weapon. Any questions?" She looked and saw the Doctor's mouth moving, fish-like, behind his visor. "Sweetie, you have a question?" she asked as the students helped themselves to guns and bombs.

"Er, no, River, you seem to have everything under control," he said. River noticed he wasn't going near the crate of guns. Somehow she wasn't surprised.

"All right," she said, once half the party had picked up rifles and the other half had loaded the carry-pouches of their spacesuits with bombs. "We've got . . ." She checked her chronometer. "Less than two hours before sunset. We can't survive the winds past that. Neither can naked Daleks, I expect, but it's the armored ones we're worried about. Come on. Let's go."

She began jogging back towards the dig site, rifle cradled in her arms. She looked back to be certain everyone was following, and saw a lone space-suited figure heading back into the ruins in the direction of the tunnel where they'd found History Bob. She didn't need to ask who it was.

"Hold up, Cowboy!" she shouted, turning in place. "You are not going anywhere alone. Certainly not unarmed."

"I'm just going for a bit of a reccy," answered the Doctor sheepishly, turning to face the others. "And I'm not unarmed. I've got this, for one thing," he said, pulling his sonic screwdriver from one of the pouches of his suit. "And this," he added, tapping the glass of his helmet to indicate his head.

"And a fat lot of good your brains will do if a Dalek blasts them out of your skull. I'm coming with you. RayQuan, you lead the party to the dig site. You know how to set the bombs. Sideshow, you will wait until EXACTLY fifteen minutes after sundown for both parties to return, and, if anyone's not aboard, take off without them, return home, and tell the Starfleet to send the biggest bulk cruisers they can find out here to blast this planet until it cracks like an egg. Is that understood?"

"But Professor . . ." began Sally.

"Don't argue, there's no time," said River. "Our biggest priority is keeping the Daleks from using the _Lupine_ to leave the planet. Next is warning the rest of the galaxy. After that is slagging the dig site. Personal survival runs a late fourth. I'm sorry, but keeping these Daleks contained is more important than any of us."

"Understood, Professor," said RayQuan, his face an ashen gray behind his visor. "Come on, gang. You heard the lady." He motioned for the team to follow him.

River set off to follow the Doctor.

"I'd try to talk you out of coming with me," the Doctor said, "but I'm painfully aware of how stubborn you can get."

"Almost as stubborn as you, I'd guess," said River, jogging along behind him, gun cradled in her arms.

"More so, I'd say," said the Doctor. "If that's possible."

"You notice I didn't try to talk you into staying with the group," said River.

The Doctor merely grunted in reply.

After they'd spent a few minutes in what River felt must have been a truly awkward silence for the Doctor, he spoke: "River, you know, we haven't known each other all that long, but I have to tell you, you really are amazing. You're not like anyone else I've ever been involved with. You're clever, and competent, and brave, and, well, you're mature. You can handle yourself. You aren't just hanging on my coattails waiting for me to rescue you. And . . . and when I'm with you, I feel _safe_. Like I don't have to be a god, or a legend, or larger-than-life. I can just be a man. Well, an odd man with very cold hands, but you get what I'm saying. And River, for all my gabbing, I'm really rubbish at putting my feelings into words, but . . ."

"Whoa, hold on a minute!" put in River. "If you're trying to screw up your courage to tell me you love me, please don't strain yourself! At least not now. This is hardly the time. If we manage to live through this mess, we can go back to my apartment, I'll make you a nice curry, and we can have the big relationship talk. Right now, shouldn't you be telling me your big plan for defeating the Daleks?"

"Plan? What plan? I haven't got one," said the Doctor. "Foolish to try and make a plan, with so little data to go on. I'll take a look round, see what we're up against, and improvise. Plans just limit your options. I like to keep things flexible."

"You do know you're quite mad, right?" said River.

"Oh, absolutely," said the Doctor. "You know, that comment you made earlier, about finding a girl in a shopping mall, that really did hit a little too close for comfort. I have a rather messy history of getting involved with young girls with no real direction or purpose in their lives. Makes sense, I suppose–if they knew who they were and what they were doing, they wouldn't have the time to go gadding off through time and space with a loopy old codger in a police box. The problem is, generally, once they get their heads together, so to speak, once they decide who they are and what they want . . . well, they don't need me to tell them when to jump any more. They outgrow me. And I'm left crushed and broken-hearted to start the vicious cycle all over again. Now you, you're different. I'm mean, not to say that our relationship won't go South eventually because, not to put too fine a point on it, I'm practically immortal and you're human, but . . ."

"You're trying to distract me," said River. "So I won't be afraid."

"No," said the Doctor, "I'm trying to distract myself. Of course, it really isn't working. So if you have any Dalek-related questions, you might as well ask now." The Doctor paused to help River over a pile of rubble. She looked up at the buildings they'd passed earlier.

"Doctor, look," she said. "It seems some of our little friends have left their perches."

"Seems like a lot of them have," agreed the Doctor, scanning the ruins. "I wonder–are they just getting undercover before nightfall, or are they off preparing us a welcome committee?"

"Let's just hope they aren't all getting dressed," said River. "Let's hurry."

"Indeed," said the Doctor. "Although I haven't much doubt that a naked Dalek could find ways of inflicting serious harm on a body if it came to that."

"So why are they all naked?" River asked. "And why haven't they attacked us sooner? Why didn't they attack us on the first dig?"

"I've been wondering about both those questions," said the Doctor. "To answer the first, probably a lack of facilities and materials to build new armor. They've probably got to cobble together whatever casings they can out of the bits and pieces in the wreckage, and take turns using them. Those shells aren't just armor–they're life support, too. Handle most of what we'd consider basic body functions. You have to understand, the Daleks were designed and engineered by a deranged cripple who'd lost both legs, one eye, one arm, and the function of most of his organ systems during the wars on their homeworld."

"Wait–you're saying someone actually incorporated disabilities into the Daleks?"

"He considered it 'weeding out non-essentials.' He was probably the second maddest lunatic I've ever known."

"Only the second?" scoffed River. "Who was the first?"

"Oh, we haven't got nearly enough time for that story," said the Doctor evasively. "To answer your second question: the Daleks, being, as you put it, disabled, have a long history of using sturdier, more agile life-forms as a slave labor force. They were probably waiting to see what you could uncover in the ruins, and then, once the heavy lifting was done, come out and take the artifacts and your ship."

"Makes sense," said River. "So they only attacked Bob Reynolds because he got too close to them?"

"He probably startled a patrol," said the Doctor. "Wait–look there!"

He pointed ahead to the opening to the underground transit system where they'd found Bob's corpse. Several shapeless masses were slipping into the opening, a tentacle or two whipping the air as they vanished.

"Well, what do we do now?" asked River, unshouldering her gun and taking off the safety.

"Wait, wait," said the Doctor. "Don't go waving that thing around. If they perceive you as more of a threat than an asset, they'll kill you on sight. Our best bet is to get them curious about us. The one real gift their creator gave them was his sense of scientific inquiry–all twisted towards military objectives, of course. Still, they aren't stupid, and they're desperate for anything that can help them survive. I want to try and talk to them."

"You're going in to parlay?" River asked, incredulous.

"I'm going in to learn. Then we'll see." The Doctor followed the slime-trails left by the crawling Daleks down into the dark tunnel. River shook her head and followed him.

They switched on their headlamps as they descended. When they reached the bottom, dozens of pale, greenish blobs, nested among writhing tentacles, slithered out of the beams of light. River caught glimpses of rheumy eyes blinking at her and shuddered. "What were they like before they were like this?" she whispered.

"Like us," said the Doctor, following the creatures down the transit tube.

River swallowed back the bile rising in her throat and fought the urge to start shooting.

As they turned a corner, the sea of pulsing green flesh parted before them. Shadows loomed against the far wall. The Doctor stood perfectly still, hands outstretched, empty palms up.

Even through her helmet, River could hear the voices: grating, mechanical, unnatural.

"HALT! HALT OR YOU WILL BE EX-TER-MIN-A-TED!"

River found herself wondering if the strangely enuciated words were actually coming from the creatures, or if they were mute outside their shells, even as her legs trembled and she wanted nothing more than to run and hide. _Share office space with one of these buggers for a year, and you think they can't scare you. Then you see them moving . . ._ She knew they weren't any bigger than Dilbert, but somehow, in the dim light and cramped space of the tunnel, the three armored forms gliding towards her seemed huge, blotting out everything else. She bit her lip.

"Ah," said the Doctor, "just the chaps I've been looking for. Take me to your leader."

The Dalek scouts paused, but only for a moment. "YOU WILL COME WITH US!" grated the first one. "YOU WILL BE QUESTIONED!"

"Oh, absolutely," said the Doctor. "I'll answer anything you ask, though I expect you won't be too happy about what I've got to tell you. You don't get out much, do you? And I'll bet you haven't had any newsreels from the front in a while."

"SILENCE!" ordered the lead Dalek.

"No need to shout," said the Doctor, slipping past the scouts and heading down the corridor from which they'd come, causing them to have to stop short and turn to follow him. River darted after the Doctor, giving the Dalek scouts a wide berth.

"Oh, wait, I'm sorry," the Doctor continued. "I guess you do have to shout. No ability to modulate your vocalizers. Non-essential," he said to River with a knowing nod. "They don't have actual vocal chords. In fact, I'm not sure if they even have mouths."

"Hmm. I was wondering," said River.

"We live through this, you'll be the recognized expert on the subject, you know."

"Wonderful. Tenured at twenty-seven."

"You're only twenty-seven?" asked the Doctor.

"Yes. How old did you think I was?" asked River.

"I dunno. Somewhere between twenty and forty, I supposed. Human age is hard for me to judge sometimes."

"Oh, thanks a lot!" said River, rolling her eyes.

"SILENCE!" screeched the Dalek rolling up behind them.

"oh, sod off," muttered the Doctor under his breath.

At last the tunnel widened out into what must once have been a large transit hub-station, though to River's eyes it looked like a cross between a laboratory and a scrap heap. Wires and thick snaky conduits hung from the ceilings. Banks of instruments flashed on every wall. Naked Daleks crawled, writhed, and slunk in and out of the detritus, leaving ropes of whitish mucus everywhere they passed. Two more armored Daleks stood in the center of a mass of instrumentation. River blinked, realizing that one of the casings was actually open and empty; its occupant was cradled in a nest of wiring suspended from the ceiling and apparently linked into a bank of video monitors. As she watched, it released its hold on the wiring, dropped down into its casing, closed it with two tentacles, and rolled forward.

"RE-PORT?" it barked at the scouts.

"ALIENS DISCOVERED PENETRATING SECTOR BETA," said the lead scout. "WE HAVE BROUGHT THEM FOR QUESTIONING AND EXAMINATION."

 _I don't like the sound of that_ , River thought.

The Doctor stepped forward, drew hinself to his full height, and made a brief gesture towards his breast. River actually smiled as she realized he'd been trying to reach his eyeglasses, which were sealed inside his spacesuit. _Gonna put on the teacher specs and give 'em a good stern talking to?_ she thought.

"I am the Doctor," he began, his voice, amplified by the speaker in his helmet, ringing around the room. "By the authority invested in me by Lord Rassilon, first and last President of the High council of Time Lords, and in accordance with the statutes of the Shadow Proclamation, I order your immediate surrender!"

The two Daleks before them actually rolled back a few centimeters. _A Dalek double-take?_ River wondered. Then the leader spoke:

"IRRELEVANT. DALEKS DO NOT SURRENDER. YOU ARE OUR PRISONERS. YOU WILL COMPLY, OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"

"Ex _cuse_ me?" replied the Doctor, voice squeaking a tiny bit, in the tone River knew meant he was just getting warmed up. "Did you hear what I said, or do you have sand in your aural processors? I am THE DOCTOR. The oldest, most feared enemy of the Dalek race! _Ka Faraq Gatri_ , "The Oncoming Storm"! Ring any bells? Because it should. I've been fighting your kind since they were first spawned, and I have never been defeated! I could destroy you armed with nothing more than my shoelaces and a wad of chewed bubblegum, and I've got a ship out there full of guns and bombs ready to blast you to hell and gone! I'm giving you a choice. Surrender now. Let the crew of the _Lupine_ leave. And I'll give you this planet, on the condition you never leave."

"UNACCEPTABLE," said the Dalek leader. "A SINGLE PLANET IS INSUFFICIENT FOR THE MIGHTY DALEK EMPIRE!"

"Wha?" The Doctor scoffed audibly. "What 'mighty Dalek empire'? You lot? You're no empire! You're the mighty Dalek scrap-heap! The Dalek jumble sale! You've got what, half a dozen functional armor casings? And in case you haven't noticed, there are no reinforcements coming to Ghehenna. There are no other Daleks. They're all dead. I killed them!"

"RECORDS INDICATE KILLING IS DISTATEFUL TO THE DOCTOR," said the Dalek leader.

"Yes it is," said the Doctor. "But I'm very good at it. Do you know what your creator Davros called me? 'The Destroyer of Worlds.' Right before I killed him. You should take my offer. I'm giving you a world where you can survive, thrive even. You don't surrender, I'll take my TARDIS into the heart of this system's sun and send it supernova. Should have done it a thousand years ago, but I thought it would be overkill. Guess I was mistaken. Won't happen again."

The second Dalek leveled his gun-arm at the Doctor. "IF HE IS THE DOCTOR, HE IS TOO DANGEROUS TO LIVE. EXTERMINATE . . ."

River winced and closed her eyes, but the first Dalek intervened. "NO, HE IS TO BE KEPT ALIVE. IF HE IS THE DOCTOR, WE WILL USE HIM TO UTILIZE THE TIME LORD ARTIFACTS."

"THE DOCTOR CAN NOT BE CONTROLLED," said the second Dalek. "KILL HIM, AND WE WILL ANALYZE THE ARTIFACTS OURSELVES."

"NEGATIVE," answered the first Dalek. "RECORDS INDICATE TIME LORD TECHNOLOGY CAN ONLY BE HARNESSED THROUGH TIME LORD PHYSIOLOGY. WE NEED HIM ALIVE."

"KILL HIM, AND RE-ANIMATE THE RELEVANT PORTIONS OF HIS CORPSE," suggested the second Dalek. River glanced over at the Doctor, to see how he reacted to this grizzly proposition, but he seemed to be barely listening to the Daleks' argument. Instead, he seemed to be tracing out the wiring patterns of the room with his eyes. He spared a glance for River, grinned, and winked at her. She gasped. _He's actually enjoying this!_ she thought. _It's like a game to him–keep them squabbling long enough for him to figure out how to blow up the room with a sonic pulse to the right circuit. My goddess, what a man! If we survive, I won't just make him a curry, I'll have his babies!_

"HIS BRAIN WAVES WILL BE NECESSARY," the first Dalek was saying.

"EXTRACT HIS BRAIN AND KILL HIS BODY," said the second Dalek. "HE CAN NOT BE ALLOWED TO ESCAPE."

"HE WILL NOT ATTEMPT ESCAPE," said the first Dalek."RECORDS INDICATE THE DOCTOR CAN BE CONTROLLED." He swivelled to face River. "ARE YOU A FE-MALE HU-MAN?"

 _Oh, great day for my ego!_ River thought. _First my lover thinks I'm nearly forty, then this Dalek can't even tell if I'm a girl!_ "I can't see how that would matter to you," she said to the blinking eyestalk hovering before her visor.

"PRISONER'S GENDER IRRELEVANT," agreed the second Dalek. "EXTERMINATE IT."

"NO," said the first Dalek. "GENDER RELEVANT TO THE DOCTOR. RECORDS STATE HIS GREATEST WEAKNESS IS AN ADDICTION TO THE BIOCHEMICAL STATE CALLED 'LOVE'. A HUMAN FEMALE IS NECESSARY TO INDUCE THIS CONDITION. IF THE HUMAN IS FEMALE, NINTEY-FIVE PERCENT PROBABILITY THAT SHE IS A COM-PAN-ION, A HUMAN KEPT BY THE DOCTOR TO INDUCE 'LOVE'. THREATEN THE FEMALE, AND THE DOCTOR BECOMES IMPOTENT."

 _Romantic little bastard, aren't you?_ thought River. "Listen, you overgrown saltcellar, you can't get to him through me. We human females are easily replaced. There's at least two girls back on the _Lupine_ who'd be happy to keep the Doctor's bed warm at night. Shoot me if you want."

The second Dalek swivelled his gun towards her, as the Doctor blurted out, "River, no!"

"HYPOTHESIS CONFIRMED," said the first Dalek. "HUMAN IS COMPANION. YOU WILL COMPLY, DOCTOR, OR YOUR FEMALE DIES."

The Doctor's jaw dropped, ever so slightly. Then he regained his composure. "You know, it doesn't really matter, whether we live or die. We've given orders to our subordinates, you see. They'll leave Ghehenna without us, and then they'll send the human's Starfleet to destroy you."

"NEGATIVE," said the Dalek leader. "WE WILL EXTERMINATE THE HUMAN CREW AND USE TIME LORD TECHNOLOGY TO CONQUER THE UNIVERSE."

Sudden movement at the far side of the room caught River's attention. A dozen armored Daleks glided into the chamber. Floating between them was a nul-grav sled. On the sled stood the TARDIS.

"All right, campers, let's make this snappy," said RayQuan to the rest of the team as they jogged back into the dig site. "Ladies, you're going to take the Rover around the perimeter, stopping to place a charge every ten meters or so. Gents, we're going to walk straight across the site in rows, doing the same thing, and the girls will pick us up on the far side . . ."

"Wait a minute," said Summer. "I can walk as fast as any of you guys. Faster than Po. Let Kitty, Megan and Sally take the Rover, and let me join you . . ."

"Let me walk, too," said Sally. "I'm not short either."

"Oh, pick on the short girls!" said Kitty.

"You're the medic," said RayQuan. "You have to stay with the Rover. Megan, you drive, Kitty, you place bombs. Then we'll spread out: Summer, Juan, myself, Sally, and Po. Be careful with the charges–the plan is to set them off remotely, but they can be triggered manually, and we don't want them going off by accident." He displayed the controls to the rest of the team, and then they set off.

By the time RayQuan was halfway across the crater, the Rover was already nearly halfway around. Megan and Kitty had already picked up Summer and were waiting for Juan as he made his way through the debris. RayQuan set another charge and tried to pick up his pace, noting the dust beginning to whip through the darkening sky as the sun set. _You know, we just might pull this off_ , he thought. Then a blast from the left side of the crater caused him to freeze in his tracks.

It was Po. He'd made it to the edge of the crater and was firing his rifle into the ruins. RayQuan fought the urge to run towards the undergrad and hit his com button, shouting, "Stick to the plan, people, stick to the plan!" and hoping that the rest of the team heard him.

Sally obviously hadn't. She'd abandoned her set path and was stumbling through the crater towards Po. Now RayQuan could see what the young man was shooting at: a mass of unarmored Daleks swarming out of the ruins. Po was managing to keep them at a distance, but only barely, and there were more crawling out of the ruins every moment. Ray Quan decided that being blown up by an ill-placed bomb would be no worse than having his spacesuit ripped off by Daleks and started running towards the opposite side of the crater, tossing charges about as he went.

The Rover picked him up on the far side. "I kinda forgot to set the last couple charges," said Juan as RayQuan climbed on board.

"Hell with 'em," said RayQuan. "Let's just give 'em to the Daleks. Megan, punch it. Po's about to get munched on!"

Megan steered as direct a course across the crater towards Po as she could. Sally was within a couple meters of him already, but halted as a cluster of Daleks blocked her path. RayQuan stood up in the Rover and began shooting. Once he'd cleared her path, she ran up to Po's side and began lobbing her charges into the ruins, where they blasted rubble and Daleks into the air with equal violence.

In spite of everything, Sally and Po were borne down by the sheer numbers of Daleks attacking them. Megan gunned the Rover forward recklessly, crushing several Daleks with a series of squelching pops. Now everyone's com circuits crackled with static, as the members of the party all cried out at once.

"Oh my God, my leg!" screamed Sally, waist deep in a seething pile of tentacles. "They're inside my suit, they've got me!"

Kitty and Summer reached out to Sally as Juan and RayQuan kept shooting. Kitty managed to bludgeon a pair of Daleks off of Sally's right leg with a heavy spanner, but Sally's suit was shredded.

"Her suit's compromised!" cried Kitty. "We've got to get her back to the ship!"

"Get Po on-board!" ordered RayQuan. "Po, where are you?"

The undergrad managed to stagger to his feet despite the half-dozen Daleks clinging to him. He turned towards the Rover, and took a step towards it, but before Juan could grasp his outstretched hand, a half dozen fully-armored Daleks rolled up out of the ruins. The leader opened fire, catching Po square in the back. His friends stood frozen as he screamed and died.

 _Jenkins! They've killed Jenkins!_ was the first thought to cross River's mind when she saw the TARDIS.

"RE-PORT!" ordered the Dalek leader to the party bringing the TARDIS.

"ALIEN VESSEL IS SECURE," replied the first of the incoming Daleks. "CONVERSION BEGINNING. TIME LORD CAPSULE AVAILABLE FOR EXAMINATION."

The null-grav sled halted a couple meters from where the Doctor was standing. Six Daleks levitated the TARDIS off the sled and set it on the floor. River glanced at the Doctor's face; his teeth were clenched and his brows drawn together in an expression that River was sure predicted utter and complete destruction for the Daleks.

" _Can you hear me?"_

River started. It had been the Doctor's voice–but inside her head.

" _River, can you hear me? Is the thought-mail on-line?"_

" _Yes, I can hear you Doctor, but how . . ."_

" _This room is radiation shielded. Has to be, or their equipment wouldn't work. Now I'm going to take off my gloves. Don't watch, or they'll notice. Follow my lead, and when I say run, follow me. Oh, by the way, I take it back–these Daleks are stupid!"_

Once the TARDIS was resting firmly on the ground, the Dalek leader ordered thoe ones who had been transporting it: "JOIN OUR FORCES AT THE EXCAVATION SITE. ASSIST IN THE EXTERMINATION OF THE HUMANS."

"WE OBEY," the dozen newcomers answered as they turned and glided out of the room.

The lead Dalek turned back to the Doctor. "YOU WILL OPEN THE CAPSULE, OR THE FEMALE DIES."

"Oh, I don't think so," said the Doctor, almost carelessly. "You see, you've just made a number of fatal tactical mistakes, the worst of which was, you've made me angry. I liked Abernathy Jenkins. And Sideshow Bob."

River noticed that the Doctor's gloves were off and his right hand was moving toward the tool pouch of his spacesuit.

"Do you have any idea," the Doctor continued, "how hard it is to find someone who has actually seen every single Treehouse of Terror episode? And can discuss them intelligently?"

"IRRELEVANT!" said the lead Dalek. "YOU WILL COMPLY . . ."

"THE DOCTOR IS ATTEMPTING A DIVERSION," said the second Dalek. "EXTERMINATE HIM!"

"NO, HE WILL COMPLY!"

"You know, they should've put you in charge of this lot," said the Doctor, nodding to the second Dalek. "But, they didn't. Instead you've got thick-shell here," he gestured to the lead Dalek, "and he's dumber than a box of rocks. I'm going to defeat you just like THAT."

With his left hand, the Doctor snapped his fingers and with his right he pulled an explosive charge from his suit and flung it into the wiring connected to the monitor systems.

" _RUN! Now!"_ shouted the Doctor's voice in River's mind as he dove to the floor to avoid a plasma bolt fired off by the Dalek second-in-command. River followed suit, realizing that the Dalek scouts behind them would have difficulty shooting at them without hitting their superiors.

The door of the TARDIS miraculously swung open and the Doctor scrambled toward it, followed closely by River. Meanwhile, the bomb the Doctor had thrown into the wiring went off, filling most of the room with a fireball that engulfed the Dalek leader before he could finish screaming "EXTERMIN . . ."

River flung herself through the TARDIS doors as the Doctor leapt for the console and slammed the doors shut behind her. "That was close," he said, darting from control to control, turning knobs and flipping switches. "Oh, River, for future reference, don't ever let anyone discharge a weapon into the TARDIS from outside. I've got a weapons suppression system in here, but if someone fires in through the doorway, it overloads it and the whole thing goes off-line. Found that out the hard way about five regenerations ago . . ."

He paused a moment in thought. "Has it really been that long? That many lives? I have been careless, haven't I?" He switched on the exterior viewscreen, to be met with a sight of burning wreckage and half-melted Dalek casings. "Wow," he said, "that's almost better than Dorothy's deodorant!"

"What?" gasped River, pulse and mind racing.

"Long story, tell you later," said the Doctor. "Meanwhile, hold that button there, no that one . . ."

River pressed the button.

The Doctor pulled a lever and the column in the center of the console began wheezing. "We've got to get to the dig site, help the rest of the team," he said.

"How," gasped River, trying to catch her breath, "how did you do that? Open the TARDIS doors, I mean."

"Oh, like this," said the Doctor, miming finger-snapping.

"You just snap your fingers, and the doors open?"

"Apparently so. Not that she was designed to work like that, but we've been together so long, I suspect we're telepathically linked more closely that most capsules to their pilots." He dashed a quarter-lap around the console and pushed another lever. The TARDIS shuddered to a halt. "Remember, you can't shoot in here, and don't shoot through the doorway. Come on." The Doctor yanked a lever, and the door opened.

They had landed next to the Rover. "Get inside!" the Doctor called, punting a naked Dalek that had tried to crawl into the TARDIS. "Leave the Rover!"

River pushed out past the Doctor and, seeing that half her students were still pre-occupied with shooting at a small cluster of armored Daleks, leapt up onto the Rover and joined them, blasting one of the armored forms as RayQuan and Juan took out its fellows.

"By the way, very nice job with the munitions, RayQuan," said River. "All right, everyone, you heard the Doctor, we'll have to leave the Rover. Get into the TARDIS, now, while we've only got the crawlies to fight–there's a dozen more big shooters on their way up from below, be here any moment!"

"All of us into that box?" asked Megan.

"Yes, into the box. Trust me, we'll fit." River laid down a burst of fire that scorched and withered a mass of crawlers heading towards the TARDIS, then helped Summer and Megan lift Sally down from the Rover's cargo bed.

"Oh, my goodness," said River when she saw what had happened to the leg of Sally's suit.

"Quick, get her in here!" cried the Doctor, who was kneeling in the TARDIS doorway, brandishing his sonic screwdriver at the Daleks as if he were warding vampires with a cross. "I've found a frequency that hurts these little guys, but when the big ones turn up . . ."

"Don't need to tell us twice, Sweetie," said River, helping Kitty down from the Rover. "RayQuan, where's Po?"

"They got him," said Juan grimly, taking a pot shot at a couple more crawling Daleks and leaping down from the Rover.

RayQuan dropped his gun and jumped from the opposite side of the Rover.

"RayQuan, what are you?" River cried, though she was pretty sure she knew what he was doing.

Summer, Megan and Kitty half-carried, half-dragged Sally's limp, unconscious body into the TARDIS. Juan kept firing into the ruins. RayQuan knelt and lifted Po's corpse from the ground, slinging it over his shoulder and carrying it back to the TARDIS. Juan went in after him, and River followed once her party were aboard.

The Doctor kicked one last Dalek out of the doorway as River pulled the lever to close the doors.

"All right, let's regroup," said River. To her surprise, the Doctor took off his helmet and began removing his spacesuit.

"Automatic decontamination," he said by way of explanation. "The TARDIS's already absorbed all the radiation we've brought in."

"Well then, helmets off," said River. "Kitty, what's happened to Sally? Is she wounded? And Po–you said they'd got him. Shot?"

Juan nodded, taking off his helmet and dashing tears from his eyes. "Yep. They shot him up. Lit him up . . ."

"You, you could see right _through_ him," added Summer, voice quavering.

The Doctor was kneeling beside Po's body. "I'm sorry, all. He took a direct hit, like History Bob. Nothing anyone could do. Let me see Sally. Was she shot?"

"No," said Kitty, "they tore open her suit and got at her that way . . ."

On the other side of the room, Megan removed her helmet and promptly vomited.

"Oh, dear," said River, rushing to support the sick girl.

"I hate taking students Dalek hunting," the Doctor muttered under his breath. "Never though I'd have to . . ." He helped Kitty finish removing Sally's spacesuit and examined the young woman's leg. Her trousers were torn, her skin was red and blistered from exposure to the radiation of Ghehenna, and, worst of all, she had a deep puncture wound in her upper thigh. The flesh around the wound was an ominous purple-black hue, and ugly red streaks were spreading up and down her leg.

"Whatever they wounded her with, she's been poisoned," said the Doctor. "We've got to get her into stasis before it spreads. Kitty, I've got a stasis bed, three doors down the hall, on the right. Gentlemen, if you could help . . ."

RayQuan and Juan lifted Sally and, with Kitty following, carried her down the hall.

The Doctor returned to the console and began darting back and forth, fussing with the controls. "River, I'm going to take off, and then broadcast a pulse to set off the charges in the crater."

"Ah!" cried Megan, covering her ears as the engines geared up.

"What is that thing?" Summer asked, pointing to the column rising in the center of the console. "And is it supposed to sound like that?"

"That," said the Doctor, "is the Time Rotor of a Type Forty Capsule, and she's over a million years old, so, yes, she sounds like that normally."

"Over a million years . . ." said Summer in an awed voice.

"Yes, she's quite the antique . . . _don't take that the wrong way_ , he whispered to an instrument panel. "The craft you were excavating out there was much newer–only a couple hundred thousand years on her when she died, poor thing. Used to take us over a thousand years to grow a TARDIS, you know. A Dalek cruiser could be built in a matter of weeks. Strange as it sounds, we just flat ran out of time."

"What now?" said River. "Are we leaving Ghehenna?"

"Oh, no," said the Doctor. "I want to to go back to the _Lupine._ For one thing, I don't want the Daleks to have her. You heard what they said about "conversion"–they're already fitting her to leave. For another, did you notice how the returning attack party said nothing about exterminating any crew when they took the ship?"

"That's right," said River, face brightening. "Do you think they might still be alive?"

"If they had the sense to hide from the Daleks instead of trying to fight them, yes," said the Doctor. "These aren't the cleverest Daleks I've ever met." He activated the viewscreen and then aimed his sonic screwdriver at an instrument on the console. On the viewscreen, River saw the excavation crater go up in a series of fireballs.

The Doctor sighed. "The cleverest Daleks I've ever met have always ended up realizing what a pathetic, horrid, little pack of toxic monstrosities they really are. Then they'd go mad and commit suicide. Or be murdered by their fellows for trying to instigate change." He sighed again, an old, tired sound. "Well, back to the grind. A Time Lord's work is never done, it seems."

"Hey, dude, you've been holding out on us!" said Juan, returning to the console room with RayQuan on his heels. "Why didn't you tell us you were a Time Lord in the first place? Or did you just get a kick out of watching us sweat over the dig?"

A wave of protective feelings rose up in River's breast, and she snapped at Juan, "We owe our lives to the Doctor! He owes us nothing! If he chooses to keep his own council, it's because he has no desire to become a freak show! Now show him the proper respect!"

Juan rocked back on his heels. "Whoa, Professor, I was kinda kidding! I like your boyfriend . . . say, did you know he was a Time Lord when you two hooked up?"

River felt her cheeks flushing.

"Shut up, Juan," said Megan.

"Uh, sorry, I guess that was kinda stupid . . ." began Juan.

"Shush! Everybody! Shush, shush, shush . . ." hissed the Doctor suddenly, putting his hands to his temples. "I'm _thinking_!" He began pacing rapid circles around the central console, muttering to himself. "What to do, what to do . . . what do they have? What do we have? What do they need? . . ."

"Can't we call for reinforcements?" suggested Juan. The Doctor paused and gave him a withering stare. "Reinforcements?" he repeated. "From where?"

"Uh, other Time Lords?" said Juan.

"Aren't any," the Doctor said coldly.

"Not any? None?" asked Juan.

Megan snorted in disgust. "Hello, you moron, have you ever heard of any others? Why do you think he has to have a human girlfriend?"

"Don't call Juan a moron!" began Summer.

"Would you all PLEASE be quiet!" demanded the Doctor. "And stop digging into my private life! This is not an episode of _EastEnders_!"

"What do you need us to do, Doctor?" asked River calmly. "Just give us the word."

"We need to go back to the _Lupine_ ," he said. "We need to find out if Bob and Jenkins are alive."

"Do you think they might be?" asked Megan.

"There's always a chance. And I won't leave them behind," he added.

"Of course not," said River.

"Hey, this is a time machine," said Juan. "Can't we like, go back to this morning, tell Prof Reynolds not to wander off, and keep all this from happening?"

"No," said the Doctor. "Just . . . No."

"Why not?" asked Juan.

River cut in. "Because it would probably put holes in the fabric of space-time."

"Exactly," said the Doctor. "You see, that's why she's my lover. She understands things. Now, if we could just _focus_ . . ."

Juan, who had been about to say something, shut his mouth.

The Doctor continued. "It will only take a few minutes for the Daleks to regroup, promote new leaders from within the ranks, and decide their best plan is to secure the _Lupine_. If we are to have any hope of taking it back, and reclaiming the artifacts in the hold, we have to move quickly. Back at their base, they talked about 'converting' the ship for their use. What do they need to do to it?"

"Install handicapped ramps?" suggested Juan.

"Maybe . . . maybe not," said the Doctor. "Depends on whether or not they've got the miniature repulsorlifts in their casings on-line, and if they've got enough power to operate them. Most of them are unshelled, anyway."

"Refit the controls for toilet plungers?" suggested Summer. "I mean, those things that look like plungers . . ."

"Nah, they can probably handle your controls with their tentacles," the Doctor said. "And they can climb up the stairs the same way, if they need to. But they needed to convert something . . . Aha! The atmosphere! The gasses and radiation of Ghehenna that kill us keep them alive outside their shells. They need to convert the life-support system, to produce the equivalent of Ghehennan air!"

"So the atmosphere on board the _Lupine_ is toxic to them?" asked River.

"Well, maybe not toxic," said the Doctor, "but it's probably not what they prefer. Certainly, they can't survive in it for long."

"I just though of something," said RayQuan, who'd stayed out of the conversation so far. "These little buggers are pretty much blobs when they're out of their shells, right? We might be able to flush the crawlies out of the _Lupine_ by jacking up the internal atmospheric pressure. I mean, we'd have to get back into our suits to do it, but it could work. Then we'd just have the big ones to deal with, and the guns work on those just fine."

The Doctor stared at RayQuan, eyes huge. "That . . . That's brilliant!" he shouted. "Quick, everyone, back into your suits . . . No, wait, I don't want you people coming out of the TARDIS, too dangerous. I'll go alone . . ."

"Over my dead body," said River, locking her helmet back into place. "I'm coming with you, and so is RayQuan. He knows the ship's systems better than I do. The rest of you, though, stay in here. See if Kitty needs any help for Sally. And clean that up, all right?" she added, indicating the puddle where Megan had been sick.

The Doctor darted back and forth at the consoles. "RayQuan, where on board should we materialize?" he asked.

"Well, I'd say the hold, but the Daleks are probably all over it. There are some access panels in the crew lounge. Start there, work our way down."

"All right. River, hit that button . . ."

The TARDIS materialized with her customary agonized moans. River and RayQuan each took up their weapons. RayQuan offered a gun to the doctor, but he refused.

"No thanks," he said, shaking his head inside his helmet. "The rest of you young folks, stay put, no matter what! If I don't return, the TARDIS is programmed to return you to the University. You'll have to contact your Starfleet. Megan, use this lever to close the door after us."

He opened the TARDIS door to a crew lounge full of slime and naked Daleks. River pushed RayQuan out before he started shooting; the Doctor leapt out onto the table, slid across, jumped to the door, shut and locked it, waving his sonic screwdriver at the lock panel, which promptly exploded. RayQuan and River kept shooting at the crawling Daleks.

"Don't hit the controls!" cried the Doctor, "And look behind you!" A couple more Daleks were swinging down from the observation deck; River spun and shot them.

The Doctor moved to a nearby com panel and jammed the sonic screwdriver inside. Immediately a high-pitched whine filled the room, and those few Daleks that hadn't yet been shot went linp, twitching their tentacles helplessly. "That should keep the crawlies out of our way. RayQuan, help me find the atmospheric controls. River, turn the table over. We need it as a barricade for when they blow that door in."

"Will a table hold them?" she asked.

"For about 15 seconds, which might be good for something . . ." The Doctor began ripping paneling off the wall, exposing the conduits and wiring beneath.

"Here, Doctor, let me," said RayQuan hastily, "Bob was showing me . . ." He pushed the Doctor out of his way and began fiddling with a set of controls. "Let's see, this should turn the vents to maximum . . ." All the loose papers and rubbish in the room began blowing about as the air came on. "Then we turn up the pressure . . . Doctor, I can't get it to go any higher . . ."

"Pull out the safeties," the Doctor suggested, and yanked a couple wires out of the wall."

"How do we know if it's working?" River asked, looking in revulsion from behind the overturned table at a group of twitching Daleks. Without warning, one of them exploded, spattering River's faceplate with green matter. "Ugh!" she cried. Two more Daleks burst. "This is nasty!"

"Ew, works better than I thought," said the Doctor. "I guess pressure plus sonics equals Dalek guacamole . . ."

"Oh, and I used to like guacamole!" groaned River, wiping the mess off her faceplate.

"I don't," said RayQuan, "it's creepy . . ."

A sudden blast ruptured the door to the lounge. The Doctor and RayQuan dove behind the table as an armored Dalek rolled into the room shrieking "EXTERMINATE!" at the top of its tinny voice. River popped up from behind the table and blew the upper half of its casing to bits. RayQuan followed suit, shooting a second Dalek in the corridor.

"Nice work, you two," said the Doctor, turning to his companions with a manic grin. River noticed an almost devilish light in his eyes, and suppressed a shudder. "What now?"

"Clear the ship of armored Daleks, search for the others, and get ready for take off. I think we've nutralized any unarmored Daleks on board . . ." He paused as one last creature exploded with a squelching _pop_. "We've just got to get rid of the big boys."

"Well, there won't be any on the bridge or in the crew quarters," said River. "Their casings won't fit through the hatches. They'll be in the hold."

Then that's where we're going." The Doctor gave one last wistful glance at the sonic screwdriver, but left it in the com panel and led the others out into the corridor . . .

And into view of a third armored Dalek. It raised its gun arm to fire, but its aim was spoiled when a heavy _something_ flew out of a nearby hatch and bounced off its gun; it shot the wall. River fired and hit the Dalek before it could get off another shot.

The Doctor stood frozen, staring at the statue of Ganesha that had just clattered to rest at his feet.

"What the . . ." began RayQuan.

The lumpish, spacesuit-clad form of Abernathy Jenkins stepped out of his cabin. "I was hiding in my bunk," he explained. "Where are the others? Sideshow was in the hold when they attacked, I do not know . . ."

"Jenkins, thank God and Goddess!" River exclaimed, cutting Jenkins off. "Come with me to the bridge, we need to get ready to take off. RayQuan, go to the hold with the Doctor. Go first, you've got the gun." She grabbed Jenkins' arm and began propelling him towards the bridge, ignoring his cries of, "but wait, the others, are they alive . . ."

Jenkins shot two more armored Daleks rolling up out of the hold. "I think we're clear of the big guys," he called to the Doctor from the entrance to the hold, "but they've got the main cargo ramp open, and it's crawling with the little ones. We've got to get that ramp shut . . ."

"Cover me," said the Doctor, sprinting past RayQuan towards the ramp controls.

"Look out for the little guys!" called RayQuan, following the Doctor. He could see dust flying as the ship's atmosphere blew out through the hatch, and unarmored Daleks clinging to the ramp with their tentacles. "There's a couple heading for the control panel!" He shot them and joined the Doctor.

"I'm going to have to turn off the air to get the ramp up," said the Doctor, working over the control panel. "Wish I had the sonic . . ."

"Hurry it up, there's more big boys coming!" said RayQuan. He saw a dozen or more armored Daleks converging on the _Lupine_ 's cargo ramp. He took aim and fired, fragging one. Then the Doctor shut off the internal vents. Air stopped blowing out of the hold, and dust clouded RayQuan's vision as the night winds of Ghehenna began to blow into the hold. He kept firing blind.

"Doctor, get that ramp up!" The Daleks outside began to fire into the hold, forcing RayQuan to take cover. "Hurry!"

"I'm working, they seem to have done something to, ah, here!" exclaimed the Doctor. The ramp began to rise. Slowly. The Daleks continued to fire in through the door, and now RayQuan could hear them shouting. He took a chance and moved out of cover to fire.

To his surprise, he saw two Daleks shot by bolts coming from somewhere to the left of the ramp.

"Doctor!" he cried, spraying suppressive fire, "hold the ramp! I think Sideshow's out there!"

A pair of gloved hands grabbed the edge of the ramp, and a figure in a tattered spacesuit heaved himself clumsily to the ramp, rolling into the hold with a groan of, "Ow, my back!" The ramp closed, shutting out the night, the wind, and the Daleks.

"River, are you ready to go?" cried the Doctor into the com.

" _I was born ready, Lover-boy. Hang on,"_ came her voice from the bridge.

With a rising rumble, the _Lupine_ 's engines roared into life.

The Doctor stood quietly in the corner of the reeking crew lounge, as River's team members cried, hugged, and laughed. River caught his eyes. He smiled slightly and slipped into the corridor. She followed him.

"This," he said to her, taking a deep breath, "is the point in the adventure where I usually cut and run. Sally and Sideshow are stable. You should be able to get back to the University without my help. And you'll have one hell of a story to tell. They probably won't just give you tenure–they'll probably give you your own chair, in your own department."

River felt her chest tighten. "Then I guess this is good-bye," she said, trying to keep her lip from quivering. "Your work with us is done. It's been an honor and a privilege to know you, Doctor."

He put his arms around her. "I said I _usually_ cut and run. But I'd be an idiot to run from you. Not when I can run with you . . ." He kissed her.

"River Song," he said, "I want to stay."

3Artifacts:

Part Three

River Song took a moment to admire the earrings lying in her hand before putting them on. Pure gold and almost as fragile as tissue, they formed cascades of tiny flowers and birds. Fifth-Century Byzantine, he'd said. She didn't doubt it. She wondered if they shouldn't be on display in a museum somewhere.

Not that she'd ever give them up. _Maybe I'll leave them to the University in my will_ , she though as she put them on. Just as she stepped back from the vanity mirror, a sound from the living room caught her ear: a late 20th Century show tune. Her heartbeat quickened, and she felt her face breaking into a silly schoolgirl grin in spite of herself.

"Can you feel the love tonight . . ." she hummed along as she went into the living room. Looking around for the tenth time that evening, she saw everything was in its place. She fidgeted with the stack of papers and datapads resting on the catchall table by the door. "Wouldn't do to forget my speech . . .Let's see, ten minutes to walk across campus from the dell, and then . . ." She tried to catch her breath. _I shouldn't have dressed yet, should have stayed in my robe . . . But the opening's in less than an hour, there isn't time . . . Well, there's always time, but no, tonight's important._ She laughed out loud at herself, and returned to the bedroom for a last dab of lipstick and some perfume. "Look at you," she said to her reflection in the mirror. "Nervous as a sorority pledge. Happens every time . . ." She went back into the living room, switched off the music, and stood in front of the door.

She had it open before the first chime of the doorbell had finished. "Darling!" she cried. "Oh, my, look at you! A tuxedo! You are utterly perfect! My beautiful . . ." She pulled the Doctor into her apartment and kissed him.

"I brought you something," he said when their lips parted. He held up a small box containing a multi-petalled blossom floating in water. "It's a Janusian water-lily. It's slightly empathic–changes color according to the moods of the people around it.

As River watched, the petals flushed from a pale pink to a deep reddish-purple.

"What does that color mean?" she asked.

"It, um, means, ah . . . that we're probably going to be late."

"That's what I thought."

River rolled over onto her stomach on the bed, to get a better look at the clock on her bedside table. "Uh-oh, the gallery officially opened ten minutes ago."

"Do we really have to go?"

"I do. I'm supposed to be giving a speech in five minutes. You can stay here and do whatever you like."

"Not without you I can't," the Doctor pouted. He raised himself onto one elbow. "River, oh, my, you actually did it! You got the tattoo!"

"Yes, of course I did," said River, climbing reluctantly from the bed and looking for her clothes. "You haven't seen it yet?"

"I haven't seen you since the _Lupine_ returned from Ghehenna . . . Are you saying I've been here since?"

River chuckled softly, retrieving her stockings from the corner of the bed. "Now, you know you can't ask me things like that . . ."

"Well, it's good to know I haven't wasted any time . . ."

"If by wasting time you mean wasting any opportunity to show up here unannounced, eat my food, sleep in my bed, and generally throw my life into disarray, then no, you haven't."

The Doctor's face fell. "Have I been making a nuisance of myself?"

"A nuisance?" River laughed. "Farthest thing from it. Loveliest thing in the world, to come home, walk in, and see your overcoat on the hat rack and your sock-feet hanging off the end of the sofa."

"You let me put my feet on your sofa?"

"I let you put anything anywhere, darling. How could I stop you?" She picked his clothes up off the floor and pitched them at his head. "Hurry and get dressed. I'm leaving."

"Is my tie straight?" the Doctor asked River as they walked briskly across campus.

"Yes, darling."

"Is my shirt buttoned right?"

"Yes, darling."

"Is my hair OK?"

"Darling, your hair has a life all its own. It's fine. Now stop being such a fashion victim!"

"But River, you look wonderful, and I'd just like to look half so good."

"Oh, so now you flatter me," said River, laughing.

"But you do! I love that blue dress you're wearing. Wherever did you get it?"

 _You gave it to me_ , she thought, but just smiled and said nothing.

"It really shows off your figure," he continued, dropping a few paces behind her to admire the view.

"Oh, dear," said River, half-laughing, "coming from you, that must mean it makes my hips look huge. Sweetie, I know I'm going to have to tell you this again, and it probably won't make a bit of difference, but when a woman asks you if something makes her bum look big, the answer is not an enthusiastic _yes_!"

"Why not?" protested the Doctor. "If you didn't have hips, you wouldn't look like a woman!" He caught up to River and put his arms around her. "You have no idea how much I hated that wretched suit you had to wear on Ghehenna. I couldn't see your body at all. Looked like you were wearing a plastic sack. You are beautiful, River, absolutely beautiful, and I like to be able to admire you!"

River smiled. "I bet you say that to all the human girls."

His jaw dropped. "Oh, that . . . that's not fair!"

"So you aren't denying it?" River teased.

"I'm over nine hundred years old!" he protested, with the little squeak to his voice that let River know she'd better back off. "It's understandable that I've got a history . . ."

River gave him a quick peck on the cheek and continued walking. "It's all right, Sweetie," she said. "You know it doesn't bother me. I like ancient relics with a history to them–I am an archaeologist after all."

The Doctor spluttered a little, but followed her.

"What's all that?" he asked as they rounded some shrubbery in front of the University Museum.

"Those people? The media, probably," said River. "This gallery opening's big news."

"Oh, I can't . . . I can't be seen. Not by the media!"

"Why not? Your hair is fine . . ."

"No, you don't understand, what if I'm recognized . . ."

River sighed. "I do understand. You don't want to be part of the exhibit. Of course. My bad. I should have warned you. Do you want me to sneak you in the back way?"

"You can do that?"

"Of course. It's my exhibit!"

"I thought you said it was open?" asked the Doctor as he and River entered a semi-darkened room.

"It is. Well, the outer gallery is. The exhibition rooms won't be opened until after my speech. Which I am late for . . ."

"Right."

"Follow me. The lights won't come up until the doors are opened, and I don't want you knocking anything over . . ."

"What is this room . . ." The Doctor paused, peering around the dim, silent space.

"Main exhibition hall. Done as a mocked-up TARDIS control room interior, and incorporating the Time Lord artifacts we brought back from Ghehenna. Feel free to slap me if you feel it's in poor taste, but these museum folks are terribly fond of spectacle."

"No, I'm sure it's beautifully done . . ."

"This next room's a bit cramped," warned River. "This is where we're displaying all the Dalek artifacts. Again, apologies if we've gone overboard on the drama."

"That's Dilbert?" asked the Doctor.

"Yes. You know, if you don't want to stand here with him, you can go wait in the other room . . ."

"As long as he doesn't move . . ."

"You know, one of the curators here suggested that we rig it to move and speak. Jenkins and I told him to get stuffed." River came to a pair of frosted glass doors brightly lit from the outside. "I'll try and keep my speech short," she said, giving the Doctor a quick peck on the cheek before unlocking the gallery doors.

River's speech was short yet agonizing. _How useless, how silly, how tawdry_ , River couldn't help but think as she spoke. _To make an evening's entertainment of such a terrible thing as this war . . ._ She looked out across the well-dressed crowd, ever conscious that somewhere in the darkened rooms behind her waited a man bowed down under a grief she could scarcely fathom.

"In closing," she said, "I would like everyone here to take a moment to remember the sacrifices made on Ghehenna. Not only those made by the members of my team . . ." She caught the eyes of Po Chang's mother and father, standing a little apart from the rest of the audience. "Though those were great, but by all those who fought and died there so many centuries ago, so that we might have the right to live today." She reached to press a button on the podium; the screen behind her flashed to life, and the white-robed Time Lady gave her final orders to the Doctor.

River had hesitated in deciding to include the recording in her speech. She feared it would be merely a cheap theater trick, a sensationalist stunt. But finally she had decided that at least one of the dead should be allowed to speak for herself. River bit her lip as the recording sputtered to an end.

"My distinguished guests, what you have just heard are the last words of a noble woman. Doctor John Smith, the crypto-linguist of our excavation team, has interpreted them. She said, 'The outcome of this war is more important than all our lives'." River paused. The audience remained respectfully, mercifully, silent. "Through the doors behind me, you will first encounter the Daleks, a force of almost unimaginable evil from which my own team and I barely escaped. But set against that horror there is now, for the first time, evidence of a beauty and a majesty almost forgotten by civilized worlds. Gentlebeings, I bring you the Time Lords of Gallifrey. Please–treat their possessions with reverence. These people died for you."

It took River nearly an hour of mingling to find the Doctor in the crowded gallery. She spotted him staring wistfully at what River felt was one of the most beautiful and enigmatic artifacts that they had found. She stood next to him, reading over his shoulder at the description card in the case:

 _Female Humanoid Figure, 60cm high_

 _Found in pieces among the personal effects of a crew member, this delicately rendered sculpture, in conjunction with recorded transmissions and biometric scans included in a medical database, demonstrates the remarkable similarity between the Time Lords and other humanoid species._

 _Remains of fibers found on and about the figure suggest it was originally displayed fully clothed._

"Poor thing really shouldn't be standing there naked," said the Doctor glumly, gazing at the bald, eyeless mannikin. "She looks so cold. Not to speak of embarrassed. You do realize what she is, don't you?"

"Please don't tell me it's a child's doll," said River.

"Oh, no–Gallifreyan children would never be given so frivolous a plaything as a mere doll." The Doctor chuckled sadly. "We treated our children like tiny adults, and yet in some ways our adults behaved rather like children. No, this was the prized possession of one of the crew. Probably a woman, maybe even Madame President herself. But it is a doll. It was a custom among Time Ladies–and a few Time Lords–to own one or more dolls, dress them, name them, carry them about. I never really gave the custom much thought, seemed silly to me." He paused for a moment, thinking. "I realize now they were surrogate children. You see, the females of our species had been sterile for so long that whole mythologies had been built around the phenomenon. We reproduced using what we termed "genetic looms," sort of a cloning technique. Infants were tended by android nursemaids, and children never even met their genetic parents until they were at least seven years old. And yet after ten million years, the instinct to mother something still existed."

River stifled a comment on the Doctor's own latent biological urges as a very, very cheap shot. Instead she said, "Perhaps I can see if the studio that made the recreated clothing for the exhibit could dress her as well. And she really needs eyes. And hair."

"You should take her home with you," the Doctor said. "She's lonely."

They spoke together in quiet tones, to keep from being overheard. Fortunately, it was difficult to make out more than snatches of even the loudest conversation in the crowded exhibit hall. However, one woman's voice rose above the murmurs, and River and the Doctor turned at a loud "Oh, there you are, dear!" to face a short, plump woman with very red hair and a bright, beaming smile.

"Mother," said River, "I want to introduce you . . ."She grabbed the Doctor's arm; a quick glance at his face had shown River he was ready to bolt at the word "mother."

"You must be John Smith!" the older woman said, reaching out to shake the Doctor's hand. "I've been hearing so much about you! I'm Catherine O'Shaugnessy Song. So pleased to finally meet you!"

"Ah, right," said the Doctor, with an expression that let River know that he apparently feared his lovers' mothers more than Daleks.

"Just call him 'Doctor,' all his friends do," said River.

"Yes, most of my enemies, too," the Doctor added. River decided it would be best to steer the conversation back to academic topics.

"Mother," she said, "did you see this lovely figure here?" She indicated the case with the doll.

"Oh, River, look at that delicate carving . . . I'm so jealous!" her mother exclaimed. "Leaving the historical value aside, you've got some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen here . . . The jewelry, and the clothes you've reconstructed . . . Obviously, the people of Gallifrey had a strong aesthetic sense and a love of complex ornamentation. And this little lady–look at her, her fingers and toes, and the jointing . . . She's remarkable!"

While River engaged her mother in an animated discussion of the doll's finer details, the Doctor managed to slip away into the crowd. On noticing he was gone, Catherine Song said, "So that's the heartbreakingly handsome man you've been seeing?"

"What's wrong with him, Mother?" asked River.

"Oh, nothing, dear! He's just not what I expected. From all you've been saying to me, I was expecting a Twentieth-Century American movie star. Someone who looked say, like that chap over there," she said, waving at a man laughing loudly amidst a pack of dignitaries. "And here I meet him," Catherine continued, "and he's this poor little pop-eyed sliver of a chap with bushy eyebrows. . ."

"Mother!"

"Oh, I'm sure you adore one another. Actually, I'm happy he's such an odd little duck. You must really love him."

"Yes. Yes, I think I do," River admitted.

"And does he love you, do you think?"

"I really can't say . . ."

Over an hour later, River caught the Doctor again. This time he was standing behind the case of reconstructed Time Lord robes, munching on a tray of canapes.

"You do know you aren't supposed to walk off with the whole plate, do you?" she asked him.

"Sorry. I'm hungry. Your tailors have done a wonderful job here, River. The embroidery's almost good enough to be the real thing . . ."

"Almost good enough?"

"Well, I can tell, when I get close to it, that it's done by machine . . . Gallifreyan embroidery was always done by hand. Lots of time to kill when you measure your lifespan in centuries."

"Yes, that does make sense . . ."

"And you seem to have all the layers on in the correct position," the Doctor added. "What's so funny?" he asked as River tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a giggle.

"Oh, I'm not sure I could tell you . . ." she said, remembering the evening the Doctor had turned up on her doorstep wearing full ceremonial garb and invited her to undress him.

"Does it involve me?" he asked.

"You, a set of Time Lord robes from your wardrobe, a six-pack of Guinness, and a jar of marmalade . . . among other things," said River with a smirk.

A man's voice from around the corner of the display case interrupted their conversation: "Oh, River Song, you are truly living the dream . . ."

She turned to see the man her mother had compared to a movie star.

"Jack Harkness, Director Emeritus, Torchwood Institute," he continued, extending a hand and beaming like a halogen spotlight. "And may I say what a true pleasure it is to make your acquaintance . . ."

"Thank you," said River, shaking the man's hand and wondering why she suddenly felt somehow slimy. _Who is this guy? Con artist?_ she wondered. _Art thief?_

"A-hem!" The Doctor cleared his throat.

Harkness kept talking, not letting go of River's hand. "Professor, let me say that I have been following your career for a very long time, and I am truly impressed . . ."

"A-HEM!"

River turned to the Doctor, who was not looking especially happy. "Do you know this person?" she asked.

"Yes, and I will kindly ask him to keep his hands off my date," he said.

At this Harkness just laughed and let go of River's hand. "You've never been too good with the sharing thing, have you?" he asked the Doctor. "And do you honestly think I'm going to try and poach on your territory? I'm hurt. Really. I am." He grinned at River."We've known each other for a scary-long time–though never as well as I'd like. Really, Doctor, what is it she's got that I don't?" he added plaintively.

"You mean besides the obvious?"

"Really?" said Harkness. "Just upholstery and plumbing?"

"Just what?" asked River, thoroughly confused.

"No matter how many times I tell him," said the Doctor, "poor Jack just can't seem to get it through his libido that I don't fancy boys."

"Aha!" said River, realization dawning, "Now I know who you are! You're the randy friend, who likes to make naughty Dalek jokes!"

"At your complete and total service," said Harkness with a grin and a bow.

"Not that she needs it," added the Doctor.

"Well, of course not," said Harkness, "with the Rod of Rassilon at her disposal. Not to mention the Sonic Screwdriver . . ."

"The what of Rassilon?" River repeated, trying not to laugh; she could tell the Doctor wasn't really in the mood for his friend's jokes.

"It was an actual Gallifreyan artifact," said the Doctor. "It was part of the regalia of the Lord or Lady President, along with the Sash of Rassilon, the Circlet of Rassilon, the Key of Rassilon, and the Great Seal of Rassilon. Jack here just thought it sounded rude."

"Sorry," said Jack, "I suppose that was in rather poor taste. Tonight anyway."

"'S all right," said the Doctor, putting one arm around River and another around Jack. "I'm just happy to see you haven't changed too much."

"Mind telling me how I could?" asked Harkness. "Which reminds me–I'm trying to keep a low profile tonight . . ."

"Is that even possible?" asked the Doctor.

"Yeah, I know, I'm made of awesome, but still . . . Ursula's here tonight. Ursula from LINDA. And she fancies me–thinks because we're both immortal, we should hook up."

"And you have a problem with this because?" the Doctor asked.

"Doctor, she's made of _concrete_!" said Jack. "Imagine the chafing!"

"Ugh, I'd rather not," said the Doctor.

River decided it was high time to change the subject–if that was possible with Jack Harkness. She wasn't sure that it was. "So, Jack–I may call you Jack, mayn't I?"

"Call me anything you like, Beautiful."

"What do you think of the exhibit?"

"The layout's interesting," said Jack. "How you've put the Daleks in one room, and the Time Lords in the next. And have you noticed how everyone's staying in this room, or the foyer, and if they absolutely have to pass through the room with the Daleks, they rush?"

"Can you blame them?" asked the Doctor.

"Nope. Daleks have no design sense, and you've captured that perfectly." said Jack. "Their room's dark and claustrophobic. Come in here, it's all high ceiling and soft mood lighting. And the brass railings and velvet couches are a nice touch, River. Did you actually find a couch on Ghehenna?"

"We found parts of some furnishings, yes," she said.

"Well, you need to re-decorate his TARDIS next," Harkness said. "His console room's held together with bicycle clamps and duct tape. And Doctor, I'm sorry, but that manky old sofa of yours has got to go."

"That couch holds a lot of memories," the Doctor protested.

"And, tragically, none of them involve me," sighed Jack.

 _Nope, he can't change the subject,_ thought River.

"Really, River, see if you can't get him to spruce the place up a bit," Jack continued. "It's a dump!"

"Oh, I don't know," River said mischievously, "the bedroom's quite nice. Or it would be if he ever picked up his socks."

"And now you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it!" said Jack. "All I ask is that, just once, Doctor, you have a regeneration that shops my side of the aisle. Honestly, I really thought I had a chance with you the last time, but you changed and now it's all girls, girls, girls!"

"Hate to break it to you Jack," said the Doctor, "but I was only flirting with you to try and make Rose jealous."

"Did it work?" asked Jack.

"No," said the Doctor. "She was still sweet on idiot Mickey."

"Or it could have been the ears," Jack suggested.

"What was wrong with my ears?" the Doctor demanded.

"Does the name 'Dumbo' ring any bells?" said Jack.

"And yet you still fancied me," the Doctor countered.

"Hey, I know inner beauty when I see it! Besides, big ears . . ."

River decided it was time to start mingling again. "Obviously, you two want to be alone," she said. "I'll just go see if the Provost needs anything . . ." She slipped out from the Doctor's arm, taking the tray of canapes from his hand as she left.

River spent the rest of the evening accepting congratulations on the success of the exhibition and answering questions about the artifacts and the dig. The last group of university big-wigs went home around two A.M., leaving River standing alone outside the museum. As she turned to go back inside and inspect the exhibits one more time before the security staff locked the building, she heard Jack Harkness call out behind her:

"Hey, Beautiful! Where's your boyfriend?"

"Don't know," said River, turning with a smile. "Haven't seen him in hours. Probably went back to the apartment. Or left. This was not a happy occasion for him. Really, I'm surprised he put up with it as long as he did."

"Yeah, it's a little weird having your entire past reduced to a room in a museum. Trust me, I'm old enough to know. So, you're going back in?"

"Just want to make sure the lights are turned down and no one's spilled a drink on the Dalek before they lock up."

"You know it's a funny thing about the Daleks of Ghehenna," said Jack.

River braced herself.

"Not a week after your party returned, the system's sun went nova. The planet was completely obliterated. No warning.

 _There was warning_ , River thought. _They were warned . . ._

"Seems an awfully odd coincidence, doesn't it, that an apparently stable star would collapse like that," Jack continued.

"I wouldn't know," River said. "My specialty is archaeology, not astrophysics."

"I think you know what happened," Jack said.

River stopped in her tracks. "Of course I know as well as you do what happened! And Torchwood plans to do what, exactly, about it?"

Jack shrugged. "Nothing at all. What could we do? What could anyone do? I just wondered if he'd you know, said anything to you."

River looked away "No, and I haven't asked. How could I? I sleep with him, for God's sake! Do you think it's easy for me to be in love with a creature capable of such a thing?"

"You're good for him, you know," said Jack.

"What, I'm supposed to be his conscience?"

"He has a perfectly functional conscience of his own," said Jack. "Sometimes a little too functional. No, your job is to give him a good, swift kick in the pants when he gets bogged down wallowing in all the guilt . . . And speaking of . . ." Jack paused. "Shh . . ."

They stood at the doorway into the Dalek exhibit. From the room beyond came the soft sound of a man's voice singing in low, mournful tones: " _And as we wind on down the road, Our shadows taller than our soul . . ._ "

"Oh dear," said River. "Does he sound drunk to you?"

"Plastered," said Jack. "Get ready to administer that kick . . ."

"It would probably be better if I just dragged him home and poured him into bed," said River.

"You can't talk him into sobering himself up?" asked Jack. "He can do it . . ."

"If he's not too far gone," said River. Bracing herself for whatever foolishness her lover was about to put her through, she marched through the Dalek room to the Gallifreyan exhibit hall, Jack close on her heels.

The Doctor lay on one of the couches, an empty champagne bottle in one arm and the doll in the other. He was singing to it. More bottles littered the floor near the couch. River just shook her head. _He's been alone what, 20 minutes? Where was he hiding with all that booze?I think I am going to kick him . . ._

"All right, Doctor," said Jack, "put down the baby doll and no one gets hurt."

"She's no' a baby doll," the Doctor protested. "She's a _Lady_!"

"Ho-Kay!" said Jack, rolling his eyes. "Thought I was weird . . . Just goes to show, the more repressed the culture, the freakier the porn . . ."

"Jack, could you get your mind out of the gutter for one second, please? And how did you even get the doll out of the case?" she asked the Doctor. "Oh, never mind," she added when he gave her a blank look. "You probably just sonic'ed the lock."

"Whoa, is 'to sonic' a verb now?" asked Jack. "Talk about taking indecent liberties . . ."

River ignored Jack and knelt down beside the Doctor. "Sweetie," she said gently, "it's time to come home. You aren't doing yourself or anyone else any favors sitting here feeling sorry for yourself. And they have to lock the exhibit."

"Y'know," he mumbled, "Megan's changed 'er major. Not gonna be archaeologist. Studyin' English Lit. An' Po's dead, and HistoryBob's dead, and Sideshow's in hospital, and Sally's got an android leg . . ."

"But she's alive," countered River. "None of us would have made it back alive if it hadn't been for you."

"But you shoudn't've gone," said the Doctor. "I should've kept you from going, I should have known . . ." He hung his head. "I thought when Caan said 'the end of the Daleks,' I though it meant ALL Daleks, but of course he didn't bother with the ones on Ghehenna, because he'd seen the future and already knew I would destroy them . . . I hate having to keep the Universal Causal Nexus straight. Gives me a headache."

"Sure it's not the champagne?" asked Jack.

"And all those dear students, having to carry guns and bombs," the Doctor rambled on. "You know he was right, Jack. I turn perfectly innocent people into killers. And I destroy planets. I ought to be dragged out and shot."

"Oh, please," said Jack before River could ask who they were talking about, "are you really going to worry about Davros' opinions? Gimme a break! He was a classic abuser: does terrible things to you, puts you into impossible situations, and then tries to make you blame yourself when you try to fight back. Believe me, I know–had a lover like that once."

The Doctor gave Jack a hard squint. "You saying Davros was my, my boyfriend?"

"Well, you did seem kinda anxious to save him there. Personally, I draw the line at wrinkled, eyeless gimps with no oral hygiene, but your personal life is up to you . . ."

"I think I'm gonna' be sick!" the Doctor announced, gagging.

"Shut up, Jack, if you can't say something helpful," snapped River, taking the Doctor by the shoulders. "Sweetie, not on the couch, please!"

"No, no, I'm all right," said the Doctor. "Gonna be all right . . ." He stood up, wobbling a bit. "Whoa, the floor's moving . . ."

"No it's not," said Jack. "River, you take the doll, I'll take the Time Lord." River grabbed the artifact before the Doctor could drop it, and Jack put an arm beneath the Doctor's to support him.

"Oof," said Jack as the Doctor half-collapsed onto him, "you're heavier than you look . . ."

"He's one solid strip of muscle under that suit," said River, moving under the Doctor's other arm.

"Yeah, just rub it in how well you know it, why don't you?" Jack asked. "Come on, old friend, one foot in front of the other, that's the way . . . We've got a taxi waiting, we'll get you back to the Professor's apartment . . . say, River, don't suppose you'd need any help getting him undressed and into bed?"

"No thank you, I think I can manage on my own," said River, smiling.

"Well, I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask . . ." said Jack.

"Hope springs eternal," mumbled the Doctor, "in Jack Harkness' trousers . . ."

River spent the next day at her computer console answering a mountain of "congratulations" messages. The Doctor emerged from the bedroom about midafternoon.

"River?" he asked softly, running his fingers through hair which had decided to stand sideways off his head, "did I make a perfect ass of myself last night?"

"Sweetie, I think your ass is always perfect." She grinned at him. "Really dear, no one saw you drunk except for me and Jack."

"Jack . . . I remember talking to Jack . . . He compared Davros to an abusive boyfriend . . ."

"Who's Davros?"

"Not my boyfriend!"

"Well, I could have guessed that, but who is he?"

"Nut job that created the Daleks."

"Oh yes, I remember now, you mentioned him on Ghehenna."

"He hates, well, hated me, because I was always destroying his creations."

"Well, if he hadn't made them such violent little beasts, you wouldn't have had to!" River stood up and moved to the cupboard. "Let me get you some tea, darling. You must be feeling poorly." She opened a cabinet. "Would you like ginger or peppermint?"

"Ah, ginger, I guess . . ." He looked down at what he was wearing. "Where did these pajamas come from?"

"From the closet."

"Yes, but whose are they?"

"Yours."

"I keep pajamas in your closet?"

"Yes, and a spare suit, and some shirts and neckties, and an extra pair of running shoes . . . You've got your stuff all over this apartment." She brought him a mug of tea. "Now sit down and drink this, Sweetie. It'll settle your stomach."

"How do you know my stomach's upset?"

"This isn't the first time I've seen you roaring drunk, my dear," River said with a smile.

The Doctor sat down on the couch and took the tea. "I've really been making myself at home here, haven't I?"

"M-hmm." River nodded, then put and arm around the Doctor's shoulders. "Finish your tea, then go have yourself a long, hot shower. Your hairdryer, and your comb, and your mousse, are all in the medicine cupboard. You look a mess!"

An hour and a half later the Doctor returned from the shower looking properly spiffy. "There's my Pretty Boy," said River, beaming. "I love your hair. It's adorable." She put her arms around him and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

"I suppose I haven't properly congratulated you on the success of your gallery opening," said the Doctor.

"I will consider myself congratulated," said River.

"So–what next?"

"The University's accepted my request for a sabatical," said River. "For the next six months, I figure I'll just travel."

"Travel? Where?"

"Oh, I was figuring you would decide. At least to start with."

"You want to come with me?" asked the Doctor.

"Of course! Every time you turn up here, it's always with another story of another amazing adventure. I want to get in on the action!"

"But River," protested the Doctor, "it's dangerous!"

"My life was dangerous before I met you," River countered. "Get my mother to tell you sometime about the excavation of the Temple of the Cataclysm on Woman Wept, when the counter-revolutionaries took over. I'm tired of just sitting here waiting to warm your tea and your bed. I want to share your life, Doctor."

"But River, you don't understand–bad things happen to the people who travel with me! Terrible things! The last friend I took with me ended up suffering near-fatal brain-damage and permanent memory loss! The one before that, her family was taken hostage and tortured! I'm . . . I'm dangerous! I'm not safe!"

"If I wanted a safe lover," said River, drawing the Doctor close in her arms and staring up into his eyes, "I would have stayed with Roger. Doctor, either make me part of your life or let me go. I don't want to stay an afterthought for the rest of my life."

"River . . . I . . . I could be the death of you. And then what would I do? How can I learn to live with you, only to have to learn to live without you?"

"Doctor, everyone dies."

"I don't. I change, yes, but I don't die. Rassilon dumped so much energy into me at the last, I have no idea how long I'm going to live."

"And I'm mortal," said River. "So this can never work, and it's over between us?" She tried to keep her voice steady, though she could feel the tears pricking the corners of her eyes. _Prince of the Sidhe,_ she thought, remembering her mother's Irish folk tales, _and me the poor peasant girl waiting on the fairy hill to be swept away_ . . .

"River, I . . . I didn't say that. It's just . . . This can only end badly. For me. And you . . . are you willing to risk losing everything? Your life, your career, this university? Your parents, your students?"

"Doctor, for you, I would walk away from everything without a second look," said River, and though her words surprised herself, she knew she meant them. "How could I not? You are . . . I haven't even got the words for what you are, and I would die gladly to be even the smallest part of your life." She paused. His eyes were very dark. She thought she saw tears in them. "But I don't want to hurt you. You've already suffered so much . . ."

"Oh, nah, don't worry about little old me," said the Doctor, pulling away and turning to the door. "I'll be fine. You want to tag along, tag along. Just get your things . . ."

"Already packed," said River, marveling at the Doctor's sudden change but not wanting the moment to slip away. She picked up a shoulder bag from the end of the couch.

"That's all you're taking?" asked the Doctor, turning to look.

"It's all I need."

"All your clothes?"

"I've got all of time and space to find clothes in," said River. "This is just toiletries. Girly stuff. In case we land somewhere they haven't invented deodorant yet."

"Brilliant!" the Doctor said with a grin. " _Allons-y!_ " He opened the door.

"Wait," said River. "Is this really what you want?"

"I'm not sure I have any choice," said the Doctor.

"Why? Because I've told you you keep leaving your stuff here in your future?" River shook her head. "Time travel–such a pain in the ass!"

"You have no idea," the Doctor agreed. "But yes, I do want this. I want you! I want you with me. I hate being alone! Hate it more than, than anything. And since I know I'm going to be alone again sooner or later . . ." He put his arms back around River's waist. "Later's better than sooner. Might as well try and see how long we can put it off, yes?"

"Absolutely." She kissed him.

Once they finally left the apartment, the Doctor was back to talking full-speed. "I was thinking," he said, "since you're an archaeologist, you like old ruins, and I know these wonderful ones on a beautiful planet . . . It's got rings, and they look like a huge rainbow crossing the entire sky, so explorers called the planet Asgard, because of the legend of Bifrost, the rainbow bridge of the gods . . ."

 _If a Time Lord talks in a forest,_ River thought, _and no one's around to hear him, is he still clever?_

" I haven't got anything to eat on board the TARDIS but some chocolate and sardines at the moment. Do you know anywhere we could get some food? We could have a picnic . . ."

River Song just laughed.


End file.
